Like my title suggests, it was a pretty decent watch. I was far from lamenting watching this action packed saga of conspiracies nested within each other in the theater, as I had earlier suspected. I had serious doubts regarding Sharukh playing a negative role such as this, considering the kind of roles we have grown used to watching him play on a regular basis, but then there must be something special in him to win him the hoards of fans he has and I guess I got more than a glimpse of it here.
THE MAIN CAST
Sharukh Khan: aka Vijay/Don
Priyanka Chopra: aka Roma
Boman Irani: aka DCP DeSilva
Arjun Rampal: aka Jasjit
The Plot in a nutshell
Well, it’s about a daredevil crime and drug ring leader, ‘The Don’, who is wanted by the police in 11 countries and yet he never failed to turn invisible when it came to catching him. He works for a certain Singhania , who bears the grudges of a Vardhan, one who had lost a lot owing to Mr. Singhania and had gone undercover to save his own neck. Roma, a martial arts and weapons expert holds ‘The Don’ responsible for the murder of her brother and his fiancé and is determined to be part of his ring in order to harm him insidiously.
Jasjit, a software pro of sorts is once blackmailed into wrongdoing and in getting caught by DCP Desilva, is held up by matters of the law and isn’t able to save his wife. Hence, DeSilva becomes his subject of vengeance, who is in turn hot on the trails of ‘The Don’. In one such wild goose chase though his endeavor comes good and he does catch ‘The Don’ who is on the brink of death. But he is keen to get to Singhania before he turns ‘The Don’ in, who is placed in an ‘Intensive Care Unit’ and needs a surrogate to emulate ‘The Don’, fooling his companions into divulging all secrets of the ‘Underworld’ to him and in turn, DeSilva. He find such a lookalike, an ordinary citizen in the form of a certain Vijay whom he wants to plant into the ‘Underworld’ as his puppet.
Or that is what he thinks he’ll do ….. Who is this Vardhan who everyone talks about ?What could possibly happen now that Vijay’ll be implanted as ‘The Don’? He’ll just get the secrets and lo! - movie over? Does the perishing of Don mean Roma’s revenge is achieved? Does Jasjit get his due? I’d be a fool to answer all this and spoil the fun of those who are new to the plot. All, I’ll say is we have many sub-plots which are interlinked by conspiracies which in turn are all placed within another leading to a great finale.An intriguing watch till the end. And in the end, evil prevails….
Notable Performances:
Sharukh delivers alright! The role of ‘The Don’ is perfect for him as even in real life he keeps yapping about how good he is and that he is a living legend who can do no wrong. And as ‘The Don’ he gets to profess all that and much more as a larger than life character. I don’t credit when not deserved and definitely don’t like him when he plays similar roles when it’s uncalled for. But here the situation demands it and he’s only too happy to be himself. You can see proud evil oozing through him. Every ounce of him is evil and hubris!A negative role done very well indeed!
He also deserves special mention for his contrasting role as Vijay, who is a simple , funny , timorous character and has a way of life, manner and speech very different to that of Don. SRK does do a good job of pulling off both roles side by side very well showing flexibility for a change.
Priyanka Chopra, who has come a long way over the years has done a commendable job as a ‘bond girl’ kind of role which is not a very common sight in Bolywood. Another golden palm to her versatile repertoire.
Boman Irani does a very fine job as the characters he plays .He can be really bad one moment with his cool callous attitude and make you feel like a warm, resourceful police officer the next moment.
Arjun Rampal also does a fair job unlike most of his other ventures, a serious , pained soul who wants some sort of solace from life.
Direction:
Farhan Akhtar is the man who has the biggest hand behind the success of this venture. His visualization of how modern day Don should be deserves a lot of praise. He made the action sequences fairly believable, I didn’t feel like I was being forced to eat food which was inedible. ;). Songs were same as the archetype with a few new ones inclusive of the zing of modern day music.
OTHER THINGS ABOUT THE MOVIE
1.I have watched most parts of the old ‘Don’ and one thing that stands out is the huge improvement in action sequences in general. Watching the former version now I felt that the action was pretty comical but I guess it was pretty acceptable back when it was made.
2.Now looking at the 2 characters Don and Vijay, I felt if you were to draw the best I would back Amitabh to play Vijay and Sharukh as Don, if only they shared the same face :). That however doesn’t mean they didn’t play the other role well.But that is strictly my opinion from both versions of the film , not a categorical one.
3.There are little differences in the movie from the older one, make no mistake – regarding the identity of Vardhan and the song “Paan bana Raswala” has slightly different lyrics and the general settings of the movie and of course the action sequences.Certain things have indeed been twisted. Don’t expect a ditto remake!
4.But we do get a whiff of redundancy in DeSilva going down the drain from under the car as in MI-3 , the truck being towed up on the bridge also being done in many Hollywood films. But I guess everything doesn’t need to be 100% original. No movie is completely different from the other.
5.I found it a bit ideal that an absolute lookalike popped up just when you needed him but being a remake I don’t see much point in castigating that. Then the airplane scene although a bit far fetched wasn’t totally unbelievable.
6.I think the anxiety regarding events to follow was maintained in an adroit manner throughout the movie, which’ll keep you absorbed throughout. Kudos to the director for that !
7. Initially, I had this vision that Abhishek Bachchan should be don before seeing this flick but I guess after the watch, it’s safe to say that SRK did more than just justice to his role.
I guess it’d be fair to say that it was an entertaining venture on all counts – you have a lot of skin, action, substance in plots and some good performances. Do watch this overall enjoyable flick if not for anything else to watch SRK come out of his shell of stereotype performances! Happy watching!
Don: Don ko pakarna mushkil hi nahin, ….namumkin hai!
Director: Farhan Akhtar
Writing Credits: Farhan Akhtar