Preview:
Shatarnj is the game of games, it’s the game of life. We can compare life with this game for any incident.
However, nothing much could be related in this movie. No special surprises and no extraordinary story telling. Movie seemed to be forced. It was not fluent in its screenplay, story treatment or performances.
It was like Viswanathan Anand playing chess with immature like me. Anand knew each move I could take well in advance and this made Anand bored. But as Anand started plying, he had to finish.
So did me.
Review:
I could not find any strong point why Bachchan should play the role of Wazir, it could be any other regular actor also, without making any change in suspense.
Rather Bachchan plying the role of wazir, hinted me in the beginning itself that director/producer can not spare Bachchan for only a chess teacher, it should be some strong role linked to him.
In the middle of the movie itself, I could guess who the Wazir was.
Neil Nitin Mukesh was also wasted for such a small role. Rather director could have shown any junior artist wearing a mask, and that would have created more suspense at least till end.
John Abraham was also wasted for such a small role and nothing special scene/role given to him.
The movie itself started with a slow motion song and wedding event, and till end director could not lift the pace. Incidents/story seemed to be forced on camera.
Amitabh ji has already done a great work in Shataranj ke khiladi, but this game was not played well by director/story writer.
Phone tapping of a ministry so easily, getting access to India gate area, Kashmir police believing the terrorist as resident without asking for any paper and many other events shown in movie made the movie like a movie only nothing more than that.
However some points are worth mentioning like use of pots/decorative peices placed in backyard of Panditji's houseof the shape of chess characters (Wazir) (seen in the scene where Panditji showns Pammiji the escape place of Wazir), vodka filled chess game and dialogue related to that.
There were many mistakes in the movies like, ATS officer never thought how a wallet can fall out of jeep if driver of jeep never get off the jeep. In the scene where Farhan is about to kill himself, he actually presses the trigger fully, even no bullet is released. Did he forget to place bullet or had no intension of suicide?
Operation of ATS/military were like seen always before, same set of dialogues, like, "Ab tumhare pas keval 30 seconds hai etc…"
I had to fast forward the movie near the end as everything was predictable well in advance and that spilled the interest in the movie.