Then there's Danny Denzongpa, filled with smothered anguish at the thought of a dying wife (Roopa Ganguly) and the millions needed to keep her alive.

Most interesting of all is Ravi Kishan. As a psycho on death row who cheats death, he gets some of the juiciest lines in this well-written jigsaw of fallen lives and scamsters. Kishan makes the best of the situation and comes up with a performance that pervades the screen with a wolf-like wackiness.

Also a treat is Chitrashi, who as the zestful stowaway from Pakistan comes up with a great performance. Her sequence from the hospital bed after mechanical sharks bite off her limb is the sort of foolproof emotional intervention in the rugged plot that cannot go wrong.

You love Shah for making such telling use of Mithun Chakbraorty and Danny's immense rabble-rousing personalities.

Why didn't other directors think of casting these actors in such tailor made roles? Like the cinema of Sanjay Gupta, Shah's film shows materialism to be the motivating mantra of modern times.

Money makes the world of 'Luck' go around unapologetically.

Some of the pauses dividing the five-six principal action scenes don't quite succeed in giving the goings-on a sense of rhythm and grace. But you can't really fault 'Luck' for its ration of kinetic momentum. The narration is propelled forward by a pulsating integrity to the genre of action movies.

Original in concept and engaging in execution, 'Luck' is cinema at its macho peak. It pumps up the octane to an optimum level and lets the plot devise its own pauses and porous outlets.

You don't come away liking too many characters in this tale of guns and deaths. But you don't dislike these people for their monstrous materialism either. That's the real success of 'Luck'.