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I’m Game Review: Dulquer Salmaan Can’t Save a Thriller That Stops Taking Risks

September 4, 2026 Reviewed by Rohit Kumar Thapa

I’m Game gives Dulquer Salmaan a bold supernatural-action hook, but an overlong revenge detour turns its riskiest idea into a familiar thriller.

Verdict
3/5

What this rating means: Watchable or selective; works best for the right audience. Rating guide

I’m Game discovers a wonderfully strange way to turn Dulquer Salmaan into an action hero, then spends too much of its nearly three-hour runtime explaining a revenge story that is far less exciting.

Nahas Hidhayath’s follow-up to RDX is not short of nerve. It mixes gambling, body horror, comedy and mass action around a hero whose confidence depends on being able to calculate every risk. The problem is not that the film bets on an absurd idea. The problem is that it stops trusting that idea just when it becomes most interesting.

DirectorNahas Hidhayath
Lead castDulquer Salmaan, Antony Varghese, Mysskin, Kayadu Lohar, Kathir
GenreFantasy action thriller
LanguageMalayalam
CertificateU/A 16+
ReleaseIn cinemas from September 3, 2026

Dan John is a hero built for trouble

Dulquer plays Dan John, a wealthy gambler who treats luck as an insult. To him, every bet is a system waiting to be solved. That arrogance gives the opening stretch its personality: Dan is polished, reckless and certain that consequences are problems for other people. A failed wager and a brutal accident finally leave him with a problem no amount of money can neatly erase.

After receiving a hand transplant, Dan realises that the new limb does not always obey him. The film gets its best comic and action beats from that loss of control. Dulquer has to play confidence and panic at the same time, and he sells the physical joke without turning Dan into a cartoon. A casino fight, where the hand appears to know more about combat than its owner, is exactly the kind of inventive set piece the premise promises.

This is also where Hidhayath’s commercial instincts work. Chaman Chakko’s editing gives Dan’s involuntary movements a sharp rhythm, while Jimshi Khalid’s neon-heavy images make Hyderabad feel less like a recognisable city and more like a dangerous playground. Jakes Bejoy’s score adds force, although its volume becomes tiring once the story begins repeating its emotional cues.

The transplant idea deserved the whole movie

I’m Game is most alive when Dan is negotiating with his own body. The film can be funny, unsettling and heroic inside the same sequence because its central trick changes how an ordinary punch, phone call or private conversation works. It also gives Dan a route toward redemption that is more interesting than a sudden moral lecture: the man who believes he controls everything is forced to live with something he cannot command.

Instead of deepening that conflict, the screenplay pauses Dan’s story for an extended flashback about Vicky, played by Antony Varghese, and a cricket-betting operation. Vicky brings sincerity to the film and Antony gives the character more emotional weight than the writing consistently earns. Yet the detour is so long that it drains the urgency from the present-day plot. By the time the pieces reconnect, the destination is visible and the supernatural mystery has become a familiar revenge mechanism.

The shift would be easier to accept if the flashback made the gambling world feel sharper or exposed something unexpected about Dan. Instead, it leans on melodrama and stretches information that could have been delivered with far greater economy. A movie that begins by asking whether a transplanted hand can carry memory eventually settles for villains, grief and retaliation in their most predictable forms.

Dulquer keeps the gamble watchable

Dulquer is the reason the uneven structure does not collapse completely. He gives Dan enough vanity to make the character amusing and enough vulnerability to keep his change believable. His restraint is especially useful when the premise is at its strangest. The performance does not demand that the audience take every twist literally; it asks them to enjoy Dan trying to maintain his swagger while his own hand embarrasses him.

Mysskin plays the antagonist with a knowingly eccentric edge, but the role offers more attitude than danger. Kayadu Lohar’s Isha begins as the medical professional who understands Dan’s condition, then gets pushed into a thin romantic track. Kathir, Vinay Forrt and several other supporting actors occupy a crowded ensemble without receiving enough material to become memorable. Antony fares better because Vicky is essential to the plot, though the film uses his earnestness to carry an overextended section.

Big action, diminishing returns

There is considerable craft on screen. The casino spaces look expensive, the chases move with purpose and the best hand-controlled fight finds a playful visual grammar of its own. But later shootouts and confrontations keep reaching for scale without finding an emotional pulse. Violence against women is also used as a shortcut to motivate the men, an exhausted choice that makes the revenge plot feel even older than it is.

The length magnifies every weakness. At just under three hours, I’m Game has room to develop its fantasy rules, gambling ecosystem and supporting characters. It instead spends much of that time circling a backstory whose outcome is easy to anticipate. The second half does not merely slow down; it changes the movie from an unpredictable body-horror action comedy into a conventional payback drama.

Verdict: should you watch I’m Game?

I’m Game is worth considering for Dulquer Salmaan’s committed performance, its polished visuals and a handful of genuinely imaginative moments built around the transplanted hand. Viewers who enjoy loud, genre-mixing star vehicles may find enough energy in those stretches to stay with it.

Anyone expecting the film to keep escalating its supernatural idea should lower those expectations. Hidhayath begins with the stranger, riskier movie and finishes with the safer one. The result is not a total loss, but it feels like a winning concept diluted by the need to become a routine mass-action revenge thriller.

For the confirmed theatrical rollout, see our I’m Game release guide. Our I’m Game cast guide maps the principal actors and roles.