A Potpourri of Vestiges Review
By Murtaza Ali Khan
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| Ben Kingsley and Amitabh Bachchan in Leena Yadav's Teen Patti |
The
movie ‘Teen Patti’, released in 2010, tells
the story of Venkat Subramaniam, an Indian maths professor who tries to use a
theory that could redefine the principles of probability and randomness using
one of the most popular online casino games called Teen patti (a card
game similar to poker). This theory, if successful, would allow someone to
predict the outcome of Teen patti, if they knew the three cards in the hand of
one of the participants (other than themselves). That is the basic premise of
this movie, and with some stellar cast members, it is quite an interesting
watch.
Venkat
is played by one of India’s most famous and legendary actors, Amitabh Bachchan, while there is an added
flavor of film royalty through Sir Ben Kingsley, who plays the British mathematician
who invites Venkat to London for a high-stakes game to test his theory. As the
movie progresses, we see the effectiveness of this theory as Venkat and his
handpicked students begin to roll in the money, but they raise the ire of
Mumbai’s mafia when they enter and begin cleaning up in the local illicit teen patti games. One of the students
who joins them later, turns out to be untrustworthy as well, and the plot soon
descends into jealousy, betrayal and outright greed from the protagonists.
Oddly
enough, the weakest scenes in the movie are the ones featuring the two titans,
Bachchan and Kingsley, together. While Sir Ben has
only a few scenes in the movie, amounting to a cameo role, they are quite
important in moving the plot along. One would have thought that the two legends
would have been absolute gold when appearing together, but it seems as if the
director, Leena Yadav, was intimidated by their presence and allowed them to
shoot their scenes without much direction.
Bachchan
is his usual brilliant self throughout the rest of the movie, while R Madhavan,
who plays Shantanu Biswas, a junior professor who Venkat goes to test his
theory, is also extremely good. Amongst the students, the standout is Shraddha
Kapoor, who shows spunk and decent acting chops, coming from a film family
herself as the daughter of another veteran actor, Shakti Kapoor, who also has a cameo in the movie,
incidentally.
The
background score is intense, with the composers Salim-Sulaiman capturing the
mood on the screen perfectly. However, some of the acting and set-pieces were
not polished, with the team’s hand signals in the casino, for example, being
blatantly obvious to anybody in a 15-foot radius. While yes, there is a need to
make such things abundantly clear to the audience, it could have been done with
a lot more subtlety.
Nevertheless,
‘Teen Patti’ is an enjoyable watch, and despite its basic premise being very
similar to the Hollywood hit ‘21’, there is enough ingenuity in this flick to
keep the viewer somewhat engaged throughout.
Readers, please feel free to share your opinion by leaving your comments. As always your valuable thoughts are highly appreciated!
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