Bluffmaster

Bollywood has a well-deserved reputation for being formulaic, but the good news is that there’s more than one formula. Often, you’ll see more than one formula applied within the same movie. Sometimes, this is a bad thing, and sometimes it’s good. In the case of Bluffmaster (2005), it’s very good. Bluffmaster manages to be both a caper film about con-artists targeting a ruthless billionaire, and a disease-of-the-week film about a terminally ill man learning to embrace the life he has left, and manages to balance the two plots perfectly.

Roy (Abhishek Bachchan) is not your typical Bollywood con-artist hero; he has no tragic back story. No saintly mother who has been wronged by society, and no plucky sister in need of money for the operation to restore her sight. Roy is a con-artist because he likes it and he’s good at it.

While Roy likes conning people, he loves Simmi (Priyanka Chopra.) She’s a waitress and a genuine good girl who has no idea of what Roy does for a living. All of that changes at the engagement party, however; one of the guests (Tinnu Anand) is a film producer and one of Roy’s former marks. The party doesn’t go well.


After the engagement is broken, the film skips six months ahead. Roy doesn’t quite know what to do with himself. He’s made a half-hearted attempt to reform, even helping a complete stranger (Boman Irani) who has been conned by Dittu (Ritesh Deshmukh), a second-rate grifter.

To his credit, Roy only stalks Simmi a little. He goes to her work and keeps ordering coffee until she agrees to meet him for one last drink. They meet, and she makes it very clear that the relationship is over, and storms out. Roy tries to follow, but is stopped by an enthusiastically grateful Doctor Bhalerao, the stranger he helped earlier. Disengaging himself from the good doctor, he runs out into the street and collapses.

Fortunately Dittu happens along and pulls Roy out of the path of oncoming traffic. He takes Roy back to his flat, and after a bit of banter, Roy agrees to become Dittu’s mentor. They pull a couple of jobs, and go out to a club to celebrate, where Roy runs into Simmi. And her fiance. As devastating as this is, it’s not the worst news he gets that night; after another collapse, he’s taken to Doctor Bhalerao, who tells him that he has an inoperable brain tumor and three months to live.

Meanwhile, we learn that Dittu does have a tragic back story. His father was ruined by evil businessman Chandru Parekh (Nana Patekar), who happens to own the hotel where Simmi works. Roy is looking for a purpose to his remaining life, and agrees to help Dittu get his revenge (especially after he happens to witness Chandru sexually harassing Simmi.)

While planning the job, Roy tries to come to terms with his limited lifespan. He forges a truce with Simmi, and receives some very good advice both from Bhalerao and from Dittu (who doesn’t actually know about the tumor.) The “embrace life” material is handled well, and only occasionally becomes cloying. Bhalerao’s speech is very nice (if a little too long to quote effectively) but I was especially taken with Dittu’s theory that everyone in the world has one thing that they can’t afford to lose.

And after all that, I don’t really have much to say about Bluffmaster. It’s a good movie. The two plotlines are balanced and integrated remarkably well. The cast is very good; Abhishek continues to impress me as an actor, and I liked Priyanka Chopra much more in this than in Krrrish (though it helps that she’s not playing a horrible person this time.) While the strongly hip-hop flavored soundtrack is really not to my taste, the music is well done and well integrated into the film. Bluffmaster is worth watching.