No glitter, no gold

[1]

Why make remakes? This question tortures me every time I watch a remake of any variety — official remake, inspired retelling, or a plain copy-paste job. And my answer has always been, rather simplistically, “It’s the death of creativity in Bollywood, and so it is cannibalising itself.” But the real answer, according to film scholars, is much more nuanced, much more fascinating.
To understand the phenomena of remakes, I started reading Film Remakes As Ritual and Disguise: From Carmen to Ripley by Anat Zanger.
Zanger, who has studied the retelling of Joan of Arc, Carmen and Psycho, is a professor and her book is not light reading. But her arguments are illuminating.
There are, according to her, the “auto-repetitions”, which are “controlled and highly conscious remakes”, i.e. “the lowly remake” which “represents a primal attempt to gain immortality”. Or, what another scholar calls, “commercial products that repeat successful formulas in order to minimise risk and secure profits.” SRK’s Don 1 &2, I’m thinking.
Then there is, according to Zanger, the higher variety, the “cultural repetitions” which are not always conscious, and are certainly not controlled. This “rewriting of the same text... constant repetitions of the same stories, the retelling of myths... keeps them alive in social memory, continually transmitting their meaning and relevance”. A way of cultures telling themselves about themselves.
In India we are constantly retelling the bichadna-milna stories to revisit the trauma of Partition and relive the joy of reunion (Waqt, Ram Aur Shyam, Amar Akbar Anthony...). We once loved socialist tales where man triumphed over machine (Dilip Kumar films), and now we like fights between the footpath and the skyscraper. We love Shiva’s tandav and bouts of rage (Emergency?). And then there are our favourite stories — Heer Ranjha, Devdas, the Ramayan and Mahabharat.

ALL THIS gyaan about remakes, by the way, is a diversionary tactic so as to avoid writing about Players, a lowly remake.
But since all crap that Bollywood rolls out must be duly noted, discussed and labelled so as to avoid any accusation of bias, here it is.
Players is the official remake of director by F. Gary Gary’s 2003 The Italian Job, which is not to be confused with the 1969 Michael Caine-starrer British caper film, The Italian Job.
Players has two references, and yet it gets it all wrong. This film is like the third round of insipid tea poured from a tea pot whose tea leaves have been used twice before.
In Abbas-Mastan’s retelling, dullness is omnipresent — it’s there in the tedious heist, in the acting, in the characters that actors are supposed to pose as, in the film’s pace and especially in the desi-fication of the heist which acquires a revenge-for-daddy’s-death angle and do-gooder but dim-witted chors.
Usually, chor log are sexy, their operations are slick, their actions sharp and their banter seductive. They are the smart guys who like a challenge and thrill.
Not these guys. Of these Players, as they call themselves, one has to fulfil guruji Victor’s (Vinod Khanna) dying wish for an orphanage — that task is entrusted to Abhishek Bachchan who goes by the name of Charlie Gonsalves. I have never met or heard of a more unlikely Charlie, but never mind.
Then there is Ronnie (Bobby Deol). We are told in the same breath, almost, that he is India’s best illusion artist/magician and that he paralysed his own little daughter while performing a magic trick. Now I wouldn’t trust such a man to tell me if the potatoes were boiled, but Abbas-Mastan do.
The other Players are Spider (Neil Nitin Mukesh), a world-class hacker, Riya (Bipasha Basu), a thief with a penchant for works of art, Bilal Behra (Sikander Kher), a half-deaf explosives expert, and Sunny Mehra (Omy Vaidya), a prosthetics and make-up expert.
There is also Naina (Sonam Kapoor), daughter of Victor, who has nice accessories, kohled eyes and all that. She, incidentally, is a gold medalist in ethical hacking.
Just like in The Italian Job, there is gold to be stolen. The gold these Players are after is going by train, from Russia to Romania.
In 1916, during World War I, Romania, scared of the marching German forces, handed over 90 tonnes or so of its gold and other valuables to Russia for safe-keeping. Since then Russia has repeatedly refused to return Romania’s gold. This is what history books say.
It now emerges that Russia did indeed return the gold, but Abbas-Mastan’s gang of rather inept chors decamped with it.
The Players pull off the heist in the most absurd but mildly engaging way. Then one of the chors, the smartest of the lot, turns rogue, shoots two of his mates and leaves with the gold to live in a palatial house at one beauteous edge of the world.
The chors who are alive and smarting from this dhoka-cum-humiliation must get the gold back. Which they do, with the help of Johnny Lever and his Hindi-speaking white family, three adorable Mini Coopers, and a rather unconvincing twist.
Though a lot of money was spent in traveling around the world and there are, for the pleasure of gentlemen, many babes basking in bikinis, some funny moments, lots of fancy cars and talk of the Russian mafia, Players is dreary. That’s because, a) neither the film nor we care for any of the characters; b) we know that we can plan a slicker heist; c) none of the chors seem excited about the job on hand; and d) all, barring Neil Nitin Mukesh, are really bad actors.
Ten minutes into the second half and I was begging the Players to take all my gold and please go home.