After Amrish Puri died, a lot of people were left wondering who
could possibly take his place. Amitabh Bachchan has the stern father
figure niche wrapped up, but where could Bollywood turn for gleeful,
over-the-top supervillains? Gulshan Grover? Danny Denzongpa? And then
I saw Don (2006), and had my answer. Bollywood’s next supervillain is Shahrukh Khan.
Don is, of course, a remake of 1978’s Don, which I reviewed last week. Shahrukh plays Don, most dangerous member of an international criminal cartel and, like in the earlier film, too cool to bother with having a name. (The new Don does not, however, wear a bow tie. Instead he wears neckties under his shirt. With all due respect to Mr. Khan, nobody is cool enough to pull that off without looking like a dork.)
Don lives an idyllic, uncomplicated life, smuggling drugs around the world, killing police informers with golf balls, and blowing up treacherous buyers with his trusty exploding briefcase. “It is not difficult to catch Don,” he frequently explains, “it is impossible.” He’s wrong, though; after being led into an ambush by his police nemesis, DCP DeSilva (Boman Irani), he is injured and taken into custody. DeSilva doesn’t inform the authorities, however. Instead, he recruits street musician Vijay (Shahrukh Khan), who happens to look exactly like Don, so that Vijay as “Don” can infiltrate Don’s gang while feigning amnesia.
Priyanka Chopra plays Roma, a woman who infiltrates Don’s gang in order to get revenge for the murder of her brother Ramesh (Diwakar Pundir) and his fiance Kamini (Kareena Kapoor). Unlike the 70’s Roma, she does not take a crash course in karate before setting out of her lonely crusade; the film establishes that she just happened to be a skilled martial artist before Ramesh was killed.
Jasjit (Arjun Rampal) is neither a circus acrobat nor a reformed criminal. He’s a hapless security consultant forced to commit a heist by the people who kidnapped his wife. Before he can even make it out of the building he’s caught by DCP DeSilva, who is having none of the “kidnapped wife” story. Jasjit is shot in the leg and then sent to prison, his wife is murdered by the kidnappers, and their son Munni vanishes. Jasjit enters the film recently released from prison, cool cane in hand, vowing vengeance on DeSilva. (And while I’m tempted to work in a joke about Arjun Rampal being wooden, he’s actually pretty good in Don; he may or may not be made entirely of wood, but at the very least he has moving joints.)
While the broad outlines of the plot are the same as the original Don, the details are different, and in some cases very different. The scale is bigger; while old Don is set in and around Bombay, new Don is set in Kuala Lumpur, with side trips to India and Paris. The action scenes are also much more impressive. While Amitabh picks a fight with a tiny bald man in order to escape from a moving truck, Shahrukh escapes from a moving plane, and then engages in a fistfight in mid air in order to steal a parachute. The sloppy fight choreography and gratuitous flips of the first movie are replaced by tight choreography based on actual martial arts.
Shahrukh is clearly having a wonderful time being bad, and while he chews plenty of scenery, he does so sincerely. Vijay, who conforms closely to the traditional SRK persona, is the character who rings a little false at times, while Don displays the maniacal glee of Amrish Puri at his best.
The original Don was, at heart, a simple story of a good hearted man bringing down an international criminal cartel while trying to prove his own innocence. Despite the added glitz, the new Don tries to be more realistic. It’s certainly a much, much more cynical movie; Vijay is possibly the only adult character in the entire film with pure motives. (And I would not be surprised if we discovered that Deepu is secretly selling guns to terrorists from his desk at school.) The new Don is slick and polished and hugely entertaining, but I get enough cynicism in my day-to-day life. I don’t need Bollywood for that.
Don is, of course, a remake of 1978’s Don, which I reviewed last week. Shahrukh plays Don, most dangerous member of an international criminal cartel and, like in the earlier film, too cool to bother with having a name. (The new Don does not, however, wear a bow tie. Instead he wears neckties under his shirt. With all due respect to Mr. Khan, nobody is cool enough to pull that off without looking like a dork.)
Don lives an idyllic, uncomplicated life, smuggling drugs around the world, killing police informers with golf balls, and blowing up treacherous buyers with his trusty exploding briefcase. “It is not difficult to catch Don,” he frequently explains, “it is impossible.” He’s wrong, though; after being led into an ambush by his police nemesis, DCP DeSilva (Boman Irani), he is injured and taken into custody. DeSilva doesn’t inform the authorities, however. Instead, he recruits street musician Vijay (Shahrukh Khan), who happens to look exactly like Don, so that Vijay as “Don” can infiltrate Don’s gang while feigning amnesia.
Priyanka Chopra plays Roma, a woman who infiltrates Don’s gang in order to get revenge for the murder of her brother Ramesh (Diwakar Pundir) and his fiance Kamini (Kareena Kapoor). Unlike the 70’s Roma, she does not take a crash course in karate before setting out of her lonely crusade; the film establishes that she just happened to be a skilled martial artist before Ramesh was killed.
Jasjit (Arjun Rampal) is neither a circus acrobat nor a reformed criminal. He’s a hapless security consultant forced to commit a heist by the people who kidnapped his wife. Before he can even make it out of the building he’s caught by DCP DeSilva, who is having none of the “kidnapped wife” story. Jasjit is shot in the leg and then sent to prison, his wife is murdered by the kidnappers, and their son Munni vanishes. Jasjit enters the film recently released from prison, cool cane in hand, vowing vengeance on DeSilva. (And while I’m tempted to work in a joke about Arjun Rampal being wooden, he’s actually pretty good in Don; he may or may not be made entirely of wood, but at the very least he has moving joints.)
While the broad outlines of the plot are the same as the original Don, the details are different, and in some cases very different. The scale is bigger; while old Don is set in and around Bombay, new Don is set in Kuala Lumpur, with side trips to India and Paris. The action scenes are also much more impressive. While Amitabh picks a fight with a tiny bald man in order to escape from a moving truck, Shahrukh escapes from a moving plane, and then engages in a fistfight in mid air in order to steal a parachute. The sloppy fight choreography and gratuitous flips of the first movie are replaced by tight choreography based on actual martial arts.
Shahrukh is clearly having a wonderful time being bad, and while he chews plenty of scenery, he does so sincerely. Vijay, who conforms closely to the traditional SRK persona, is the character who rings a little false at times, while Don displays the maniacal glee of Amrish Puri at his best.
The original Don was, at heart, a simple story of a good hearted man bringing down an international criminal cartel while trying to prove his own innocence. Despite the added glitz, the new Don tries to be more realistic. It’s certainly a much, much more cynical movie; Vijay is possibly the only adult character in the entire film with pure motives. (And I would not be surprised if we discovered that Deepu is secretly selling guns to terrorists from his desk at school.) The new Don is slick and polished and hugely entertaining, but I get enough cynicism in my day-to-day life. I don’t need Bollywood for that.
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