Luck: Movie Review

Director: Soham Shah
Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Imran Khan, Shruti Hassan, Danny
Rating:**

Reality television comes to big screen but the fear factor
is that it's too pretentious. So in the same South African city where Akshay Kumar played host to daredevil girls, Sanjay Dutt challenges an eclectic group to perform stunts for his betting business. Predictably you also know their order of elimination with the junior artists getting knocked-off first and subsequently the hero (Imran Khan) surviving over the villain (Ravi Kishen). Ironically, while reality shows are unnecessarily scripted, films which need a tight script are loosely written.

The first half of the film is merely devoted to character introductions though none are convincingly established. For the zillionth time, Sanjay Dutt repeats his gun-toting act, moving around in sherwani, jackets and a French beard in the company of black-suited bodyguards. What more, even his name isn't any different - Musa. Ram Mehra (Imran Khan) has to repay the 20 crores that his late father had lost in stock market. Retired Major Jawar Pratap Singh (Mithun Chakravarthy) has the same conflict that Amitabh Bachchan had in Kaante - needs money for his ailing wife. For the neighbouring country connection, the script takes a Shortcut (Chitrashi Rawat). The best is yet to come! When a loose noose fails to hang rapist Raghav (Ravi Kishen) to death, he is officially set free by the law.

The group is hand-picked by Tamang (Danny) for Musa who indulges into the most synchronized corny conversations in the film. As he gets the team to South Africa, Musa makes them aim on each other at point blank range (in a scene directly lifted from 13 Tzameti) and only peripheral characters from the circle are subtracted.

What follows is a series of terminal tasks where not the mighty but the lucky would survive. So the characters have their legs gobbled up by rubber sharks and look plastic as they fall off parachutes. Amidst all this action, the director is inclined to force a mandatory romance track (through nonexistent chemistry between Imran and Shruti Hassan) and a rape attempt to reach a speeding climax.

The opening and ending action sequences by Allan Amin are convincingly choreographed but the intermediate stunts appear too artificial. The director tries to cover up the patchiness of the action by Santosh Thundiyil's erratic camerawork but it only disturbs more. The banter between characters in confrontational scenes looks too rehearsed. Each one has a dramatized mugged-up response to complement the opponent's remarks. The emotional connect with viewer is certainly missing despite director Soham Shah's repeated attempts to induce sentiments.

Sanjay Dutt's screen presence in the film is equivalent to Akshay Kumar's contribution to Fear Factor minus his stunts. Imran Khan gives a decent performance though he can go easy on his lip movements. Shruti Hassan is synthetic and fails to impress. Danny is better amongst others but his character is short-lived in the second half. Ravi Kishen, Mithun and Chitrashi are passable.

The script of the film relies too much on coincidental luck. Director Soham Shah rubs too hard on luck but at the same time stresses on the adage that 'the only thing certain about luck is it's going to change'. On that thought here's wishing him better luck next time!
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