The Great Gambler is a 1979 Indian Hindi-language crime action film co-written, directed and produced by Shakti Samanta, under his banner of Shakti Films. Based on Vikramaditya's Bengali novel Great Gambler, the film stars Amitabh Bachchan in dual roles, alongside Zeenat Aman, Neetu Singh, Prem Chopra, Utpal Dutt and Madan Puri in pivotal roles. Its story follows international gangsters, spies, and secret agents of different countries' intelligence agencies and their undercover operations.
The film marks the first collaboration between Samanta and Bachchan, having high production costs with a significant portions being shot in international locations including Cairo, Lisbon, Venice, and Rome, and in India, many scenes were shot in Goa. The film was a box-office flop on initial release due to high distribution price, but has been widely appreciated for its action, direction, and cinematography. Later, it became profitable on repeat releases and attained cult status.[2][bettersourceneeded]
Plot
Jay is an expert gambler, been for as long as he can remember, and has never lost a game. These skills bring him to the attention of the underworld don Ratan Das, who is interested in hiring him to win large amounts of money from rich people and then influencing them into doing whatever he wants. Jay agrees to do so and plays successfully, though unknowingly to entrap Nath, who works for the government. After losing large amounts of money, he is blackmailed into revealing the blueprints of a top-secret militarylaser weapon that can hit any target within 50 miles and is wanted by an underworld don named Saxena. When the Indian police come to know of this, they assign the case to Inspector Vijay, who is a lookalike of Jay.
Jay and Vijay's paths are soon intertwined when they both travel to Rome with separate missions. Vijay is sent to retrieve the evidence against underworld don Saxena by one of his former henchmen, and Jay is onto a money-making scheme where he would marry Mala to inherit her money. Mala, however, meets Vijay at the Rome airport and Vijay decides to go along with this to find out who his lookalike is. Jai meets Shabnam, a club dancer who mistakes him for Vijay and was sent by Saxena to stop him on his mission to discover Saxena's plans. Jay and Vijay are late revealed to be actually long-lost twin brothers, and together they team up to stop Saxena from retrieving the laser weapon.
The song "Do Lafzon Ki Hai Dil Ki Kahani" was shot on a Gondola in Venice's Grand Canal.[4] The mandolin in this song was played by Arvind Haldipur.[5][6] The song was featured in the opening scene of the 2025 film The Monkey.[7]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
