Dulquer Salmaan digs deep and gives one of his most likeable performances as Dan, an irresponsible “loser” who likes to gamble away his father’s wealth. Dan gets into an accident, and the universe, well, “hands” him a chance to be the man he’s meant to be. This supernatural twist (or “rare medical phenomenon”) could have been made into a terrifically entertaining Hollywood-style action-comedy, but what we get is an overstuffed and old-style hero-versus-villain melodrama. That’s the basic storyline and the quick review. A longer analysis follows, and it will contain spoilers. So be warned.
It’s strange how filmmaking works. With a small budget and a relatively low-profile cast, Nahas Hidhayath gave us the action-packed RDX, which had solid emotional beats and appealing protagonists and good-enough screenwriting to infuse some intrigue into a clichéd storyline. Now, Nahas has a much bigger budget, a huge star in Dulquer Salmaan, all the filmmaking toys that money can buy – and the result is a movie that never lives up to its potential. The characters are one-note. The dialogues have no novelty. Scenes are dragged out. There’s an attempt to go pan-India with many languages being spoken, and the film never feels rooted in any place. Like in the older masala movies, the women (Kayadu Lohar, Samyuktha Viswanathan) exist mainly to be cheerleaders or hostages. The filmmaking is flat, and the fun and excitement and thrills in the premise are not sensed either on screen or in the screenplay by Sajeer Baba, Ismail Aboobacker, and Bilal Moidu.
That premise, though, is great. There’s an early-80s Oliver Stone thriller called The Hand, where an artist loses his arm in a car accident and, much later, the appendage begins to go on a murderous rampage. And there are other films (like Ghost) where the spirit of a dead person enters someone else’s body to take revenge on the bad guy who killed them. At least on paper, I’m Game feels like an interesting mix of all these stories, and not in a derivative way. From Varane Avashyamund to the recent Kaantha and Lokah, the films that Dulquer Salmaan has produced or co-produced have always had something going for them on paper. Even if the scale is small, the ambitions are big. And even as an actor, I’m Game finds Dulquer transcending the material. There are several standout moments that make you wonder how he dug so deep and did something so affecting.
Because the screenplay is not especially attuned to small moments, and the direction is flat throughout. There is a long set-up before the supernatural event happens, and this could have easily been chopped from the movie and not been missed at all. Yes, the film makes a half-hearted connection between Dan’s gambling habits and the reason he feels compelled to take revenge on the villain, played by Mysskin. But let’s say Dan and the Kayadu Lohar character were in love and we just spent some time with these charming actors, and then Dan had had the accident. The main story would not have turned out very differently, and we would have at least had a nice romantic track. Plus, there would have been less about betting on cricket matches. Right now, there’s too much of it on screen and it quickly becomes very repetitive.
The portions where Dan struggles with and then gets used to the supernatural element are among the more entertaining parts of the movie. But this is all in the first half. After the interval point, we are presented with a dreadfully long and predictable flashback, where each beat is treated as though it were being shown on screen for the very first time. And the film never recovers. We just wait for the bad guy to be defeated so we can go home. Walking out of the theatre, I was reminded of what a really clever filmmaker can do with the oldest of revenge plots. I am talking about SS Rajamouli and Eega, which had a similar supernatural element and was written and directed with so much joy and inventiveness. I’m Game has the premise, but after a point, it has no idea what to do with it. It slips into melodramatic territory we have been taken to many times before. But if you do stay till the end, you will be rewarded with one of the more amusing scenes with Yogi Babu in a long time. Had that playful spirit been seen throughout, I’m Game could really been something.
