Review of Bluffmaster

The process of writing comments on films and the net results differ in proportion to the time lapse between viewing the movie and the penning/typing of the review. I watched bluffmaster about a month early and did try to write a review about the movie a couple of days later but i lost the post due to the orkut server and felt that some really nice food fell down on the floor and in consequence did not make another effort.

The movie is within the genre of con films which have the whammy waiting till the end and hits you hard on the face. Bluffmaster was successful in that effort. The dialogues/lines in the movie are rather refershing and do not try to make you laugh at any cost, which is the normal hindi film tendency. Some of the lines are funny and fresh. It is also the first time we have a brooding, suffering protagonist in stark opposition to the happy go lucky successful at all things hindi hero. AB Junior, manages to do a decent job of looking forlon and getting on with life despite two issues that hindi films use as defining (cancer or some terminal disease and being dumped by the girl). His stubbled and rather a common north indian look manages to work in favour of the character. Yet, AB Jr. has been doing this in the last seven films or so...he needs to find something new and fast.....the surprise element in the movie is Ritesh deshmukh as an ardent learner who grows in screen with his character till the end which transforms him into an important pillar holding the film. My opinion remains that AB Jr. cannot carry a film on his shoulders and Bunty and Bubli and Bluffmaster are cases in support of that even though rather obliquely.

The movie moves on a single emotional, spatial and temporal plane and yet manages to hold interest, a new thing for bombay films. In context that it does not degenrate into slap stick stupid humour or bawdy humour to retain the viewers interest but steadily moves towards its goal of the final con. The soundtrack of the film is quiet amazing. I first heard the songs when i watched the movie and loved all of them. Rohan Sippy manages to infuse his direction with an almost erudite sense of hindi film memories with suggestions of past classics in certain sequences and of course the song sabse bada rupaya. In fact this tribute to hindi films within a film was another great quality in Bunty and Bubli which I think marks out the good directors from the mediocre.

Nana Patekar deserves a mention. Nana a great actor had the limitation of playing himself as that of being type cast. In this film nana is quiet fresh without being threatening, which is what the movie is all about. He has some of the most amazing lines after of course Munnabhai MBBS in recent times.