Abhishek Bachchan’s Bluffmaster: The con film that deserved more love

In over two decades of his career as an actor, Abhishek Bachchan has given multiple credible performances. More often than not, these were measured against his father and superstar Amitabh Bachchan’s success in movies. Bachchan is one of those cases who has benefited as well has been affected by being a product of nepotism. While he did get chances to revive his career, which many would not have gotten had they not belonged to a filmy family, the actor was frequently met with unjust criticism even when he performed with conviction. One such example where his act should have been more positively received at the time but didn’t, was when he essayed the conman Roy Kapoor in Ramesh Sippy’s production venture Bluffmaster!

Helmed by Rohan Sippy, the 2005 December release was a well-acted, witty film that boasted of a cast which included names like Sanjay Mishra, Priyanka Chopra, Riteish Deshmukh, Boman Irani and Nana Patekar. The movie centred around Roy, who, unbeknownst to his girlfriend Simi (Chopra), is a conman. Once Simi gets to know his truth, she breaks their engagement. An upset Roy decided to drink his woes away until he meets two new conmen in the shape of Deshmukh (Dittu) and Mishra’s characters. Dittu wanted revenge from one Chandru (Nana Patekar) who had conned his father miserably, leaving him nearly penniless. Meanwhile, Roy discovers he has cancer and has only three months to live. Hoping to do something worthwhile before dying, Roy promises to help Dittu, (SPOILER) only to discover that everything up until then, including his cancer diagnosis, was a ruse directed by Dittu with the help of Simmi. Nearly everyone involved in this elaborate game had been at some point hoodwinked by Roy. In the end, Roy realises his folly and turns over a new leaf.

The end is predictable, but only the part where Roy has had a change of heart. The rest of it, the whole idea behind staging this con and conning the conman was well done and although not entirely novel, lent the film a certain freshness. The fact that the actors suited their parts to the T, helped. Bachchan especially had most of the burden to carry, and he carried it with what appeared to be an easy charm. You believed Roy as a successful con because the actor was able to pull off the part without seemingly putting much effort into it, akin to a conman. His chemistry with Deshmukh was one of the USPs of the film. The soundtrack composed by Vishal-Shekhar was a definite earworm, with Bachchan even singing one of the tracks “Ek Main Aur Ek Tu Hai.” The editing could have been crispier, but even at two hours and 19 minutes runtime, Bluffmaster never felt like a drag, which is a high compliment.

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Bluffmaster was penned by Sridhar Raghavan, brother of filmmaker Sriram Raghavan, who cleverly used the conman conceit in the film to its advantage. Con films appear exciting and even easy to make, but to make a good one, you have to know the pulse of the audience, make them feel involved without dumbing things down for them. Sridhar’s script managed to check all the boxes. While Bluffmaster was far from a flop, the reactions it evoked at the time were mixed, which seems like a pity, because this was actually a decent film that might have been received differently had it released today.

Bluffmaster! is available to stream on Netflix.