Starring Abhishek Bachchan, Bobby Deol, Bipasha Basu, and Sonam Kapoor. In Hindi with English subtitles. Now playing

The directing team of Abbas Alibhai Burmawalla and Mastan Alibhai Burmawalla has put many familiar elements into Players, an official remake of the 2003 Hollywood film The Italian Job (itself a remake of the 1969 film of the same name starring Michael Caine). But in their hands, a potential thriller is reduced to a pedantic primer on high-stakes crime.

The ensemble cast is lead by Abishek Bachchan as Charlie, the protégé of Victor (Vinod Khanna), a thief of such legend that while in prison even the guards revere him. Victor’s daughter, Naina (Sonam Kapoor), is insistent that he give up crime. When Charlie stumbles on a tip for a large heist, Victor succumbs to the lure of the proverbial last job, and they assemble a team.

The “players” consist of Charlie’s girlfriend (and experienced thief), Riya (Bipasha Basu), bomb maker Bilal (Sikander Kher), illusionist Ronnie (Bobby Deol), disguise expert Sunny (Omi Vaidya), and computer hacker Spider (Neil Nitin Mukesh). They devise a complex plan to steal long-forgotten Romanian gold that is en route from Russia. As expected, someone can’t be trusted. While the betrayals mount, the remaining members try to keep their heads and their gold.

Films like this rely on the camaraderie of thieves; their chemistry and incongruous sincerity make us root for them despite their ill-gotten gains. Here, though, there is no hope of character development, with long sequences of no dialogue while the team works, seemingly quite hard, at the mechanics of the heist.

And isn’t crime supposed to be fun? Deol looks positively sullen throughout the movie, and the comic interplay between Vaidya and Kher is embarrassingly flat. Basu and Kapoor fulfill their contractual obligations by appearing in a number of dance sequences and gyrating on cue. The songs are garish and unpleasant and the score is relentless and annoying. Bachchan is the strongest actor in this ensemble, but in this film that is not high praise.

Watch the trailer for Players.