And by bats, I mean cricket batsmen, as Mr. Mukesh Bhatt turns his noble intentions to reform the corrupt world of sports-particularly CRICKET, with the real life murder of the Pakistani coach incorporated in this half-baked thriller cum love story.

Unfortunately, nothing works as Emraan Hashmi cannot act even if someone threatened in reality to shoot him to death, and the lady Sonali is even worse as she can smile, shout or cry but not give a single decent expression or utter a decent dialogue with conviction.

The rather aspiring tale of a novel idea is throttled by the script which keeps wandering from love songs to match fixing to psychic powers; it just cannot decide if it wants to be a love story or a thriller and inadvertently becomes a comedy of manners.

The first 30 minutes are intriguing and then it starts to struggle till it becomes a comic pantomime in the tragic finale.  The love story unfolds with a diamond ring in a mall and Arjun seems interesting till he is smuggled to south Africa to meet an international don (Javed Sheikh) who finances terror groups worldwide with illicit money earned from match fixing this gets even more predictable as Sonali starts sermonising her lover to leave his life of crime and return to become a good citizen by becoming a bar tender.  I think she is very confused as betting is a harmless profession compared to encouraging people to poison themselves with alcohol.

But it seems like Emraan Hashmi is the only match fixer on the globe and he is being chased by the super dons and the super cops of India, while he goes around throwing bags of money in the air as if he doesn’t care with a moronic friend who keeps vanishing and appearing by magic without any logic.

Emraan Hashmi is average looking and here he is very ordinary with two good songs to help him out, which are wasted in poor choreography, Sonali's dialogue delivery is non-existent and to top it the lines are clichéd and badly written, she keeps shopping in the entire movie and then tells Emraan money is of no value to her utter rubbish.

every dialogue from Dewaar (1972) to Karm (2004) is lifted from Amitabh Bachchan to john Abraham thrillers, the plot resembles a typical seventies movie except for the cricket match fixing angle, it is actually tasteless to make a mockery of such a sensitive issue as the real life murder of a coach should have been treated with respect.

Shoaib is changed to Shadab, Jamaica to South Africa, but it could never have worked with these actors, while Emraan is so-so, Javed Sheikh is bad and Sonali is awful, it is a real shame as this was a novel theme and if executed well it could have been a Chak De India or corporate, but it ends up as bad as Bhoothnath, and we have not yet recovered from the torture that horror movie inflicted on our senses.

If you live outside India go watch what happens in Vegas, Sarah Marshall or Ironman, as Jannat and Bhoothnath are even worse than Tashan.

 

RATING: HALF STAR.