Don (2006) – Please don
I would really really not like to compare the 78’s Don and 2006 Don- The chase begins again but then the movie was promoted as a remake and comparission between the two was obvious. While Chandra Barot directed the 78’s Don based on the screenplay by Salim-Javed, 2006’s Don is directed by Farhan Akhtar re-written but based on Salim-Javed’s original screenplay.
The story is almost the same. Singhania is a top drug smuggler. Don is the chief henchman working for Singhania. He sets up his base in Malaysia. A police Officer D’Silva is working to destroy Singhania’s empire. To do that he has to catch Don. During a chase, he is able to kill Don but then to catch the rest of his gang, he plants a look-alike, Vijay in the smuggler’s gang. Vijay spies for D’Silva and helps him catch the whole gang but in the raid, D’Silva is killed.
Now Don a.k.a Vijay is caught and accused of being Don. His gang knows that he is not Don and they are ready to kill him. The story here is similar to the 78’s Don. The second half has been re-written and changed to a large extent. Compared to the earlier Don, this has a lot of twist and turns. The end is not the same as the original Don. For a moment, the end had me surprised but then it’s not a typical Hindi Movie climax.
The original Don was a fast paced thriller which did not leave the audience to think about the logic. The situation and sequence and the story ran at such a pace that it was a fun to watch as the events unfolded in front of you and you did not think about the logic. It was entertainment.
The new Don fails in the main aspect of being a thriller. A thriller has to be fast paced and gripping. Don slacks, slows and sometimes even is boring. You cannot help but compare the scenes and dialog with the original and then you end up comparing the two Don, Shahrukh and Amitabh. While Amitabh made minimum efforts to be cool and savvy, Shahrukh has to resort to his trademark gimmicks to be cool. Being Don for Amitabh was using his body language to be a sign of authority and confidence. Shahrukh falls short in this category. He does try and does succeed to a large extent but he needs lots of efforts.
The movie starts slowly with slow camera moments. At a certain time, the movie gets too slow. As the first part is similar to the original, you know the scenes even if the location is different. Even the dialogs are same. The editing had to be a little tighter. Slow thriller makes for boring viewing.
Shahrukh is good to some extent. He does nothing new than his many earlier movies. He tries to portray the cool guy he is. But Don is a criminal, almost like a evil James Bond with a lot of style. What Amitabh did with ease, Shahrukh does with much fanfare and a lot of efforts.
Priyanka Chopra is Zeenat Aman a.k.a Roma. She is shown to be training martial art before her brother is killed. Her character is true to the original character and she takes less efforts to slip into the sexy Roma.
Isha Khopikar plays Anita who becomes an important character here. She hardly has any scenes. If not for the climax, she would not have been even noticed.
Farhan Akhtar messes after these two characters. Narang, an important character played by Kamal Kapoor in the original is played by Pavan Malhotra in the new one and is totally wasted, and so is Mac’s role and most importantly Kamini’s role played by Kareena Kapoor. She does not sizzle as much as Helen did in the original. It ends up being just another item number.
Coming to the next three important characters, Jasjit played by Arjun Rampal. JJ is now a computer engineer. How does a computer engineer climb high rises is not explained. The climax has him disappearing without any reason. Arjun Rampal sleeps through his role. Unimpressed.
Om Puri plays Malik, the interpol officer. Now that is one character that played a significant part in the original. Here he is just another officer. He could have been anybody. Even his characterization does not make him rise above other characters.
Boman Irani surprisingly plays a more important character, DCP D’Silva. His character changes here being a better strategist. He does a Ok job with the role.
The main problem with Farhan’s Don is, its more about Shahrukh Khan, the star instead of Don. He was so keen in giving Don the larger than life image that he forgot the story and other characters. He wanted Don to be stylish, dangerous and all that Bond stuff but he forgot that it has to be a thriller where the audience has to be thrilled. Shooting at exotic location, having new daring stunts and making the lead character more stylish does not mean having a hold on the story. The story slips to slow.
The music which played an important role in the original is unimpressive here. “Yeh mera dil” does not sizzle at all. The “Khaike Paan Banaraswala” does not impresses. Other songs I don’t even remember.
If I look at Farhan’s Don as a new film without comparing with the original, then its impressive. The treatment of the film is terms of look and feel and the second part with the twists and turns could be a decent effort. But if I compare it with Original Don, the original still rocks. The only thing similar between the two is like the original lot of illogical things happen here too.The idea of keeping an open ending means that there are now chances of Don 2.
Rating: 6/10
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On a lighter note “Don Bakwaas he nahi, ghatiya bhi hai”
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Slowness technique is the trademark of Farhan’s direction. Even DCH and Lakshya started a bit slow. But agree in action movies one does not need slowness…
Another thing since Don was a suspense thriller; it was not a good idea to remake it.
@ Punds… Just coming back after seeing Don with T!.. Review coming up… You have mentioned most of the points.. the ending did startle me but it doesnt make any sense.. and it was shown in a very haphazard way… Poor Pooor Pooor re-make… everybody is a mis-cast. Fuck so bad
Barot Saab was very happy with the idea of Don being remade. He thought it’s only the great films that are being remade. But after watching Farhan’s version he will be forced to think that it would have been better if they wouldn’t have oddaoed dhajjiyaans of his venture.
Farhan has much to learn about Indian Cine-making. I doubt he understands India, Indian films and Indian film going people.
pretty much what i wanted to say …. Faltu, u’ve said it .. and thanks for saving me from the pain of reviewing this stupid film….
SRK is more like a bully – school child, who makes faces when he is punished …. whose parents are called repeatedly by the principal… and the child says with the innocence of Bhagwan krishna “Mayya mori, main nahi maakhan khaayo !!!”
He as don is as exciting and convincing/super cool as Jim Carry as James Bond !!!! Imagine that ….
The end twist is unexpected but it doesn’t convince u like fight club/matchstick men/ sixth sense !!!! It just seems like an after thought …
I found the movie very entertaining. But then I haven’t seen the older one, so I had no baggage.
And the end twist being not convincing, I think if it were the other way around, that is it was Don who was dead, then all that Vijay did until now would’ve been so unconvincing, but now when you see it was Don all the way, I find it believable.
But then, hey this movie was not supposed to given so much after thought, it’s just a commercial masala movie, one that entertained while it lasted.
Th music, too, is a letdown. Not being cynical but an AB gyratin to Khaike is any day better than SRK doin it…
>>“Don Bakwaas he nahi, ghatiya bhi hai”
oh i love that line
I’ll resist making comments until i’ve experienced it myself!!
However mr filmy blogs i totally disagree with your comments – Have you not seen his past 2 movies. How can you say he doesn’t relate to indian audiences – he targets the youth very well imo. How many of us could relate to those characters!
HG
The slowness technque works when you make an intense drama. You expect that. But when you make a masala movie,then its so bad.
Sumeet
I agree poor poor remake. The older still scores
Illuzon
Poorane Don ka janaza nikal diya Farhan ne. The music is a big big letdown. I was waiting for the Don title song to end. Too much hero bazi
Kartik
The ending was forced.
Prasanth
Good for you that you did not see the original. Now go and see the original and then compare the two.
Sangeeta
Thanks! But Farhan was not targetting the youth this time. He was just so obsessed to make DON better. Thats why he makes him stylish.
-Punds
Exactly what I felt about the movie. I feel sad and bad for Fathan..donno what he was upto but I had some expectations from him.Perfect pacaking..empty contents. A good movie is not about box office collections..but DON will be declared a HIT with those numbers just like FANAA was.
Don Opened to 80-90% in most places on Friday.. then it dropped to 20-30% on saturday.. which is accepted as it was a Diwali weekend… Sunday it opend collected a huge amount again.. but as the word of the mouth is not good i do see the collections falling remarkably after first week, unless Farhan comes out and explains something that we the viewers couldnt understand.
Jaan-e-man is getting a good word of mouth which is not good for Don. I do not see Don being as big a hit as Fanaa was… It will be a commision earner to a flop.
Lets see. I wish movies were credited regardless of their Box office collections. I haven’t watched Jaan-e-mann, but I feel it’s a different treatment..either u wil like it or will find it very silly. Would be nice to see how PFC gang would react to it
Sudha.. that is an interesting question. But i havent seen anybody interested in Jaan-e-man on PFC, leave alone writing a review(Me included). What could be the factor? SRK or Farhan triggers more interest than Akshay/Sallu combo with debutant director Shirish Kunder, or is it just that everyone wanted to bash Don even before its release?
I was equally interested in both, but my pulton here were totally against watching Jaan-e-mann after watching the trailer which looked equally chessy to me. For some reason I believe Shirish is talented and wanted to give him a fair chance by watching it. I will definetly catch it this week.I still am an avid lover of typical hindi cinema.
Coming to people. First thing might be what you said..Frahan+SRK and more imporatnt reason, remake of DON….many people have been waiting for this day. Second thing Sajid Nadiawala+ Akshay+ Salamn sounds a typical hindi movie with a typical story, songs and dialogues…which is not in taste with many in the PFC gang.