Teen Patti (2010)

Sadly Over-hyped

Great Film overall

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Blistering performances.

This movie is a waste of excellent actors. Movie starts out OK but story and direction are poor. Use of poor lighting is likely deliberate but makes the whole movie feel even slower and shadier. It starts out OK with hopes raised due to a different subject from the usual good vs evil struggle. There is even an attempt to develop different characters and make some of them edgier with the addition of drugs, debts etc. But the movie starts drifting soon - like a boat without a captain on waves. Screenplay and direction are two key weak points. There is almost nothing to mitigate the poor direction. Even top notch actors are unable to rescue the movie.

With a cast that includes Amitabh Bachchan, Ben Kingsley, Madhavan, Raima Sen with cameos by such greats as Shakti Kapoor and Om Puri and all we get is such a boring copied script? Not even the endless parade of eye-candy could save this film from drowning in the box office flop that it was and is. It's so sad that Bollywood film-makers feel the need to do this, make their own versions of Hollywood films. A professor at a prestigious Indian university gathers a bunch of his most talented and gifted mathematics students and teaches them how to manipulate the law of probability in order to win card games at casinos. Watch the more superior movie from which it was copied, 21 starring Kevin Spacey.

My expectations were already rock-bottom after watching Leena Yadav's "Shabd". When Amitabh Bachchan, Hinduja's, Ben Kingsley and Madhavan have agreed to participate I thought Leena Yadav has a winner in her hands which will not only wash away her sins but also catapult like a phoenix. Big B's character is too idealistic to relate. Shades of grey like in "Kaante" would have added sheen to the role of Venkat Subramanian. And he was looking quite old actually and his disenchantment showed.Ben Kingsley was completely wasted. Edit his role completely and even a fly wouldn't budge. Incorporating him into the movie just fuelled marketing of bad apples.Raima Sen hardly had meat in her character. Shraddha Kapoor seems promising and has a good screen presence.Ajay Devgun, Jackie Shroff, Mahesh Manjrekar, Shakti Kapoor, Tinnu Kapoor & Ranjeet gave the blast from the past 1980's feeling. What were Mita Vashist & Shivkumar Subramaniam were actually doing?There are too many unnecessary characters and unwanted layers in the movie. Even the ode to "Bonnie & Clyde" was out of sync. Keeping the blackmailer in the hoods was not ably handled (Whodunnit? Audience couldn't care any less actually).Already the movie was facing the plagiarism threat from 21, so anything more it sank it deeper.The ending was so 1980's, melodramatic & Bollywood'ish.

15-20 people in the theatre again. Another flop. Teen Patti starts off OK. Amitabh Bacchan explains probability and some how manages to predict which hand will in a game of Teen Patti. Then, it starts to fade away with sequences which offer nothing of interest one after the other.As the movie progresses, it becomes more pointless. It is disjointed and badly edited which gets poorer by the second. It becomes a movie which says greed is bad and shows how relationships break down, student commits suicide in stress and keeps ramming the fact that trying to earn money by this method is dirty. Then there is the supposed main plot of the movie where they are trying to find out the mysterious blackmailer which pops up every twenty minutes only to disappear.And I haven't come to Ben Kingsley-Amitabh Bacchan scenes. First of all all we know is Ben Kingsley is a rich man, probably owner of a casino. And every 40 minutes there is a scene between the two mulling about life and giving away philosophies which are drab. Worst of all, they are dubbed in Hindi which is ****ing ridiculous. Makes the dialogues seem even more pointless, if that's possible.And the acting by the actors including Amitabh Bachchan is very ordinary. I give the movie a 0.5/10 and that's only because I like two songs in the movie.