The Great Gambler
Director: Shakti Samantha
Music: R.D. Burman; Lyrics: Anand Bakshi
Year: 1979
Running Time: 2 hours 42 minutes
One year after the popular reception of
“Don”, The Great Gambler attempts to emulate that success by bringing back
many of the same actors and by again giving Amitabh Bachchan a dual role
in this action film. Though it never quite reaches the deliriously enjoyable
highs of the “Don” experience, it certainly manages to pack an enormous amount
of fun into its running time. From nearly the opening scene it grabs you
by the ear and leads you on a chase from India to Egypt and through the streets
of Rome, Lisbon, Amsterdam and Venice. And unlike many Bollywood films, in
which only the musical fantasy pieces occur in these settings, this actually
has the story unfolding in these locations and at times it feels like a travel
tour – the pyramids on your right, the coliseum on your left.
Jai (played by Amitabh) is a street gambler - someone who can make
“cards dance to his tunes” and who is as quick with his fists (when his father’s
memory is insulted) as he is with his cards. A casino owner spots his talents
and after spiffing him up a bit – brings him into his business to take easy
pickings from his customers. One of these suckers works for the government
and after Jai sends him into deep debt with a winning hand, the owner Rafiq
blackmails him for the blueprints of a top military laser weapon that can
hit any target within a fifty mile range. It turns out that there is a spy
ring operating in India that sends out messages in the most Bollywood of
ways – through musical dance numbers! The bad guys hire the legendary Helen
to do her thing – a left hip shake means “top secret”, twist that right hip
and its “50 miles”, a combination hip swing and hand movement signifies “laser
weapon”.
The C.I.D. pick up that some such skulduggery is taking place and assign
their best man to look into it. This is Vijay – played by none other than
Amitabh again – not surprisingly an exact double of Jai. As one can imagine
this will lead to confusion being piled on confusion in both their professional
as well as romantic lives. Soon the spies need another dancer (as Helen pretty
much only did cameos at this point in her career) and enlist the sizzling
Zeenat Aman to replace her. Zeenat is clearly established as the bad girl
here – dances immodestly in a night club, smokes, drinks, shows cleavage,
wears a bikini and basically creates a sexual stir wherever she goes. Zeenat
also turns out to be pretty handy with a gun when she needs to be. She is
just plain yummy. Though she knows she is working in some illegal racquet,
she is unaware that she is betraying her country with her shaking and shimmying.
It doesn’t take long for the two Amitabh’s to get mixed up. Vijay (C.I.D.)
is sent to Rome to follow up on a lead, while Jai (the great gambler) gets
involved in a scheme in which he impersonates his boss’s son so that he can
marry the daughter of a wealthy NRI living in Lisbon – and both end up making
reservations on the same plane. The bad guys get word of Vijay’s mission
and plant Zeenat on the seat next to him in order to seduce him, but Vijay
misses the plane and she mistakes Jai for him and he is only too willing
to have a little fun before he meets his future wife. Vijay (are you keeping
up with this?) catches the next plane and who should spot him in the Rome
airport but Jai’s fiancee (Neetu Singh) and she of course takes him for Jai
and Vijay decides to go along with this in order to find out who his double
is. From this point on the film becomes a fast moving joyous grab bag of
car chases, fights, murders, boat chases, ticking bombs, disguises, bad haircuts,
wide collars and jumps onto moving trains – with a little time reserved for
music and romance. It all concludes with another chaotic fight finale (as
did “Don”) in a low budget Dr. No like island fortress off of Goa. This is
great fun with a myriad of booby traps, flying bodies and kung fu fighting
being thrown into the mix.
Composer R.D. Burman is considered one of the great ones, but this is probably
not one of his strongest groups of songs with the exception of Do Lafzo Ki
Hai which is sung on a gondola on the waterways of Venice and begins as an
Italian love song and is turned into a lovely Indian love song. A couple
of the others are most memorable for the heat given off by Zeenat in her
mildly revealing getups. What is terrific about the film’s music though is
the background score itself that changes constantly from jazzy influences
to pop to Indian – it is a real pleasure to listen to.
My rating for this film: 8.0
