With its exotic locales, scheming baddies, long-lost brothers, nonsensical plot, and smitten heroines, there is little to set this film apart from dozens of other masala movies of its era. Yet the charisma of its stars - Amitabh Bachchan in a dashing double role, and Zeenat Aman as smoking hot as ever - is enough to seat The Great Gambler solidly in the category of light, fun timepass.
Jai (Amitabh) is a gambler, a man with the power to make the cards dance for him, hired by casino owner Ratan Das (Madan Puri) to separate rich businessmen from their money. Ratan Das hatches a scheme to marry Jai to Mala (Neetu Singh), the daughter of another wealthy businessman (Iftekhar), and sends Jai to Lisbon to meet her. Jai doesn't know that Ratan Das is engineering a scheme to steal the plans for the government's powerful new defense technology and sell it to the highest bidder. His contacts in this scheme include a gang boss named Saxena (Utpal Dutt), whose henchmen Ramesh (Prem Chopra) and Marconi (Sujit Kumar) carry out his dirty work.
Meanwhile, a police officer named Vijay (also Amitabh) is hot on the trail of Saxena's gang and eager to recover the stolen secrets. Vijay is a dead ringer for Jai, of course, and when Saxena's gang realizes this they - with the help of their moll, Shabnam (Zeenat Aman) strongarm Jai into taking over Vijay's identity and helping them complete their transaction. While Jai is diverted from his journey to meet his betrothed Mala, she finds Vijay instead and - once she's mistaken him for Jai - sparks fly.
The story is much less coherent than that description, with numerous details, twists, and complexities that don't fit together and make little sense. But the plot is not where The Great Gambler's entertainment lies. It lies rather in odd scenes and fun moments, driven by Amitabh and Zeenat looking their best. The henchman Marconi, who lives in Rome, speaks Hindi with a lilting Italian accent. Jai and Vijay, once united, pull of a hysterical bamboozle in the guise of an impulsive emir and his bumbling secretary. There is a stomach-churning fight scene that takes place in a meat locker. Zeenat melts the screen with a hotter than hot belly dance in "O Rukasa mera naam". Asha Bhosle sings the plaintive "Do lafzon ki hai," gorgeously picturized on a Venetian gondola. Moments like these are the glue that holds The Great Gambler together when the plot gets too nonsensical or the chase scenes and fight scenes too repetitive.
Amitabh did not do enough with his double role - it was too difficult to tell his characters apart, unless there were some linguistic cues that escaped my rudimentary Hindi comprehension. But that didn't detract too much from the fun of watching Amitabh just do his thing. If you're a fan of his, or of Zeenat's, there are worse ways to spend a rainy afternoon than watching The Great Gambler.
Whenever my old Bollywood-loving college buddies get together we pick a Bollyweed movie - meaning that the director had to be smoking something when he filmed it OR you have to be smoking something to truly enjoy it. The rules are simple:
1. The movie has to be from the 70's or early 80's (the psychedelic colors, pimp clothes and haircuts are just so awesome).
2. The soundtrack has to be rocking (not difficult to do since RD Burman et al were just experimenting with some amazing East/West stuff back then).
3. The stars have to be someone of substance (AB, Rishi Kapoor, Zeenat Aman, etc).
4. The most important rule - the film cannot, under any circumstances, be taken seriously. There are some films you watch to watch but the Bollyweed ones are just sheer over-the-top mindless entertainment. To view them as anything but just defeats the fun of it all.
So one day we put this gem on & after a few bottles of wine we just had a blast :)
Highlights include:
~ In the opening credits it shows the movie was filmed in Cairo, Rome, Venice, Lisbon, Amsterdam & Goa - we just looked at eachother and could not remember the last movie that took us around the world like that.
~ For a movie called 'The Great Gambler' - Amitabh is shown only gambling twice and that is in the first 15 minutes of the movie.
~ The scene where the Indian government is showing the strength of the K2 weapon is eerily reminiscent of a Superfriends cartoon. It's the Indian government for Pete's sake - they can afford better graphics than that! And if you look really closely you can see the flaming body of the pilot falling to the ground, priceless.
~ The weapon is called the K2 weapon. The super secret code word that the bad guys come up with that they will refer to when discussing the plan to steal the K2 weapon is - yup, you guessed it - the K2 plan.
~ The crazy tune that Utpal Dutt hums whenever he has a great idea.
~ The scene which occurs on the airport tarmac. It starts off with a guy running with film canisters during DAYLIGHT and by the time he gets to the plane (not more than 500 feet away) it is already EVENING in the scene! The whole movie could have ended if he had just gotten the film to the bad guys!
Yes, this movie is just insane and completely over the top. But like Carla said - just watch it to see AB, Zeenat, some crazy scenes and some great tunes. Just don't take this too seriously and have some fun with it - see it with a group of like minded friends and see how much fun it can really be ;)
Posted by: Sanket | May 30, 2007 at 11:37 PM
Sanket, thank you so much for that fabulous comment! I forgot to mention the K2 cartoon in my review - it was a truly bizarre moment, and I didn't even notice the flaming pilot!
Posted by: carla | May 31, 2007 at 11:23 AM
Superb review yet again, I love THE GREAT GAMBLER, surprisingly this is one of Amitabh's flops from that era!
BTW would love to see your take on KHUDDAR and SATTE PE SATTA?
A.SHah
http://aakshayshah.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Akshay Shah | June 25, 2007 at 06:34 AM
HI I am HIMANSHU CAN YOU SEND ME THE GRATE GARMER
THANX
FROM:HIMANSHU
ASLO CAN YOU SEND ME ON THIS E:MAIL PLEASE I LOVE THIS FILM.
Posted by: himanshu | February 21, 2008 at 06:42 AM
Hi Himanshu - sorry but I am not in the film distribution business - I just write about 'em. :)
Posted by: carla | February 21, 2008 at 08:04 AM
Hi Carla,
I happened to catch this movie yesterday. I watched it midway, so for the first 20 minutes couldn't comprehend what was happening. But it was all so unintentionally hilarious that I continued watching. Truly a mad-cap time pass masala movie. There was even a Bond-like chase sequence in the Venetian sea :)
I now know where the makers of the Akshay Kumar's 'Khiladi' series of films took inspiration from.
Thanks for your great review. The plot was more comprehendable on ur blog than on screen!
Posted by: Rekha | April 05, 2010 at 12:33 AM