PLAYERS - Movie Review : Trying officially Abbas-Mustan go all wrong. (Review By Bobby Sing)

Throughout their career since the early 90s, director duo Abbas-Mustan have been making inspired films taking it all from the West, with a fairly good success ratio at the box office. Despite of being unoriginal and copying in almost all their films, the two still remain one of the best directors of Bollywood when it comes to the “Thriller Genre” without any doubt. Quite astonishingly they sometimes have even given us better movies than the Originals like their last RACE. But sadly with PLAYERS the story is not the same unexpectedly.

Keeping it straight, when they were copying, they were good. But now when for the first time they have gone for An Official Remake of a Hit Cult Movie, they go all wrong with some hugely un-necessary moves ruining a fine exciting script. However, before talking about PLAYERS let me enlighten you about its Originals briefly, as then it will become easy to understand the criticism.

Abbad-Mustan’s PLAYERS is based on two movies, “The Italian Job” made in 1969 and its Official Remake made in 2003 with the same name. Now the first one made in 1969 is a fine British film featuring Michael Caine as the leader Charlie, who plans a Big Gold robbery and the film revolves around only one heist in all till the climax. The main highlights of the film included the massive traffic jam plan and 3 mini coopers (small cars) chase sequence towards its end. Along with that it had an open climax with a surprise. The film has a Cult Status but if watched today you may find it too simple and straight.

The second ITALIAN JOB got released in 2003 with some brilliant, well written additions in the same plot, introducing a traitor in the team with a second heist plan too executed perfectly. This updated version of the classic excelled its original with a great script, featuring two exciting robberies in just 111 minutes. And plus it had all the elements of the original intact including the huge Traffic Jam and the 3 mini coopers chasing climax. So in short the second version of the classic came out to be much better, fast paced, exciting and entertaining.

Now coming to the third Official Indian Remake of the same called PLAYERS, it fails to leave you satisfied due to its own faulty and un-required insertions. This time Abbas-Mustan go legal and take the rights of making the film in Hindi as it should be done ethically. With a big production house backing them, they make a visually stunning movie with all the glitters of gold shining in the grand foreign locations. But when it comes to script, they mess it up posing as more intelligent than the original writers of both the classics.

So, PLAYERS misses the target mainly due to its writers and directors acting over-smart and adding many unwanted elements in the film ruining its original charm and feel. I am still confused that when there is already a Hit, well written script in front of you to follow legally, then what’s the need of adding the same rotten plots of love and betrayal to it un-necessarily? Why we still have to use 3-4 songs in a heist movie at places where they are strictly not required? And Why we always tend to stretch things to an over-limit, exceeding the length of the movie towards its climax.

Honestly speaking, if you haven’t seen the exciting 2003 version of THE ITALIAN JOB, then you may like PLAYERS as a one-time watch. But in case you have already witnessed its better remake then you are sure going to find its Hindi Version strange, bizarre and absurd. In fact the same things which were so exciting, thrilling and highpoints of its Original Remake, seem to be very childish, uninteresting and weird in this Bollywood version of the Classic.

For instance, the whole first hour is wasted in just showing the selection of various players. The train robbery sequence, though well shot, is based on very unrealistic and funny assumption where every window in the train is having a virtual film running on it, controlled by our computer man. A national treasure in Russia is robbed with such a convenience with everything falling in place giving it a highly fake look. A man wears a mask of a senior officer and enters their security easily without any suspicion (in Russia itself). The Big Golden safe gets opened in just a few seconds by only a drilling machine and a small device. The spy gadgets shown in the film are having cheap LEDs which can be spotted by even a child and the same can be said about the computer graphics used in it. A big mansion is hugely guarded by Hi-tech security but our angry young hero simply enters it in his bullet proof van smashing every gate and door reaching right in front of the culprit, just like a typical 70s Amitabh film. Plus the last scene in a very illogical manner tells you that all the Gold bars have actually been melted and converted into small cars made out of the same Gold. (By the way who thought of this legendary idea?)

Moreover, the massive traffic jam in the city, the road blasting sequence and the 3 mini coopers chase scenes in the climax, which were the key feature of its original, simply lose their existence in this over-intelligently made official remake. And then this all has a long running time of more than 160 minutes without much power to keep you hooked. The directors do make their presence felt in certain portions, especially in the execution of the heist scenes and just before the interval but overall one doesn’t feel entertained by them as compared to their last venture RACE.

Musically PLAYERS is a big dud delivered by the Hit-machine Pritam, with not even one good song in its entire soundtrack. The film is shot superbly as most of the recent big ventures but I hope the makers start giving the same attention to their script department too.

Performance wise it also doesn’t give you anything great to write about. Most of them in the cast remain wasted with only a few given more time on the screen showing the imbalance. Abhishek in the lead, remains the same in his style and act as he was in his other popular films such as “Dhoom”. Bipasha is simply there to show off her body and nothing else. Sonam once again looks over-confident with attitude. Bobby Deol, Omi Vaidya & Sikander Kher do not contribute anything significant in the film and are simply wasted. It seems Bobby just signed this film only due to his decades long relationship with the directors. Neil Nitin Mukesh tries his best but manages to do just fine. Vinod Khanna looks tired and out of form whereas Johny Lever still manages to make you laugh in his few scenes.

In all, PLAYERS can be used as a perfect example to compare the film-making styles in both parts of the world. It straight away reminded me of a great book of Satyajit Ray’s essays with the title, “Our Films Their Films”. What they can do perfectly in just 111 minutes, we mess it all and ruin the script in more than 160 minutes. And that’s only due to our fixed norms of deliberately adding irrelevant material to an already Hit script in the name of Indian elements required for a project.

If you ask the truth, then PLAYERS gets crushed by the EGO of our own creators Abbas-Mustan. Being known as great directors of this particular genre, they coudn’t accept following a script strictly as an official remake. So to show their own contribution in the project, they go on adding twists and more twists in its second half resulting in a big drag. If only they had made it simply as an official remake mixing the content of both the Hit movies, PLAYERS would have been a winner for sure.

As for now, I have one suggestion to make. If you are not going to see “The Italian Job” (2003 version) in any case, then you may opt for PLAYERS as a one-time watch if you wish. But if you are really interested in watching some quality cinema, then strictly watch its 2003 remake first before opting for PLAYERS. Because Abbas Mustan’s PLAYERS is highly capable of ruining your exciting experience of watching the best ITALIAN JOB (2003) till date.

Rating : 2 / 5 (including 1 only for its Grandeur and Cinematography)