Luck - Movie review

Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Mithun Chakraborty, Danny Denzongpa, Imran Khan, Shruti Haasan, Ravi Kishen, Chitrashi Rawat

Director: Soham Shah

Producer: Dhilin Mehta

Rating: *1/2

Wise men say that it is best to keep expectations low so that you don’t end up disappointed. And frankly I did precisely that when I went to watch ‘Luck’. But oh what a disaster even those low levels of expectations can end up in!

‘Luck’ has one of the worse screenplays, or let me say the absence of it in recent times. And it has ridiculously loud dialogues, which put you off in no time. If you could count the number of times they use the word ‘Luck’, this film could clinch the Guinness Book of Records! I remember another Sanjay Dutt film (‘Musafir’) where the actor had a remarkable dialogue which said something like – if you have the gun in your hand, shoot rather than talk. In this movie the actor does just the reverse. Actually not just Sanjay Dutt but the entire team does the same. Too much of talk and too less action; and unfortunately this was supposed to be an action thriller!

‘Luck’ does have a new story for Hindi films. There have been films in the West which have had similar concepts. People betting on lives, action adventures, bagful of money to offer contestants – ‘Luck’ has everything. But to reach to all these the audience will have to wait till the interval. The director (Soham Shah) appears clueless through the first half as he lets whole one hour pass just getting his contestants to the action field. And the rest half ends before you even start enjoying the thrill. So there is no cool action you could look out for.

The best thing about the film is its cinematography. ‘Luck’ has been shot really well and also edited sleekly. The background music comes and goes abruptly. The playback music does hold appeal but the songs are mistimed. The whole hype around Shruti’s song is not justified other than for publicity sake. Why would you need a song by Shruti to accompany Imran?

Ravi Kishen comes up with a cool performance. He is the best of the lot. Mithun tries hard to mouth his dialogues, majority of which seems to be ‘koi shaque’! He ends up quite pitiful in a brave attempt. Somehow the film takes both Mithun and Danny back to the ’80s where more of such screenplay disasters existed. Sanjay Dutt does not have much to do. He does what he does extremely stylishly – walk in and out of frames. Imran Khan and Shruti Haasan look uncomfortable and Shruti is yet to lose her heavy US accent. And lastly, Chitrashi is cute but fast getting stereotyped into loud roles. Overall, the characters are bad and very shabbily sketched.

There is one line towards the end when Danny says to Imran that one who plays from his heart end up winning. Soham needed to understand that more than the character. This movie certainly was more calculated than a story from one’s heart. It’s not direct ‘dil se’. There is one more word which Danny uses repeatedly in the film – ‘dhandha’. Soham and the producers were definitely looking at the some great ‘dhandha’ from this movie. But from the looks of it, ‘dhandha hai par thanda hai yeh’! All the best guys, but no good luck!