I have always had lot of respect for the Rediff reviews. Infact I had used these reviews as my base for deciding which movies to watch, and which not to watch. Of course, there were always some movies, which because of the promos or the subject matter, had excited me enough to watch them without waiting for the reviews. Don was one of them. I am not a Shah Rukh Khan fan, and neither am I, a 'purist' who remembers old Hindi movies verbatim. But, reading the reviews in Rediff shocked me. It shocked me enough to consider writing this post. Both the reviews posted on the site seemed to have gone to great lengths to generally give the idea that the movie, in not so many words, sucks... Ok... A small pause for letting that sink in. Ok, here goes my take.
I have to start off by stating that I haven’t seen the original, so you can consider this the view of somebody totally unbiased towards the movie, or at least somebody with a neutral point of view. I am going to try and sum up my views in a couple of important points.
1.) I believe it was in an interview with Rediff, that Farhan has said, although the movie is a tribute to the original, it is more of his take on the same story, which makes it a completely different movie.
2.) Reviews of Jai Santhosi Maa, the recent movie which started the remake trend, said that it was the exact same story as the original, hence it was dated, and it... surprise, surprise, was not good. Hence, a remake which follows the original exactly, then, wouldn’t work because the obvious reaction is, why not just watch the original? So there's got to be something new or different in the new one, for people to want to watch it.
3.) As I said I haven’t seen the original Don, but I have read enough about it from all the recent hype over the remake that I can say with some certainty that the new Don has enough elements which makes it different from the old one.
4.) IMHO, Farhan Akhtar's Don is a great movie. It’s very stylish, and slick. There are certain areas where it jars, especially towards the end, but otherwise, its makes for a really great watch. Yes, there are elements of different English movies in it, but so what? It stills looks good, unlike most other Hindi movies where the action sequences lifted off from English movies look so awful that it makes one cringe. Here at least, one can relate immediately to those sequences, but remain watching because they have been done well.
5.) I wont get into the story elements, where despite being some really unnecessary characters, some of the actors being exceedingly irritating, and some dialogues being unbelievably out of place - almost like a tribute to old Hindi potboilers - the movie's overall plotline is great and even if you figure out the twists before they happen, they still get you thinking as to how it relates to the entire story. We ended up discussing the various plot points of the movie after we left the theater and for me, that's the sign of an interesting movie... Yes, so we have seen it before, but it still looks good on screen.
6.) All reviews I read, compare the new movie to the original, and then lambasted it for being not true to the original. Hello! So it’s not the same as the original, which is good, because had it been an exact remake, why would you watch it? Alright, so maybe, it’s not as good as the original, but it did make me want to watch the original.
7.) I am not a rabid SRK fan but to be honest, I couldn’t see anybody else do the new Don the way he's done it. I am sure Mr. Bachchan had done an amazing job on the original, which I intend to watch now, but this one was all SRK. He's great! Priyanka Chopra's done really well. She's not on my favorite actress list, but here she fits the role to the tee! I don’t know why this movie needed Om Puri or Arjun Rampal as two characters who seem very incidental but that's alright. Boman Irani's put in a decent performance, albeit looking slightly chunky for his character. Although he does go over the top towards the end, he was still watchable. No idea what Isha Koppikar was doing in this movie, coz Priyanka looked hotter, and danced much better than Ms Koppikar who seemed to be flailing her arms around in the dance sequences? I am not a Kareena fan, so I am not amazingly taken aback by her performance. She doesn’t look all that sexy, but she's danced well enough.
8.) The remixed versions of the old songs are good, but the new songs in the movie aren’t anything to write about. I also felt the ‘Khaike Paan Banaraswala’ song seemed very forced into the flow of the movie, as if, it was necessary to be there and so they somehow squeezed it into the movie. I really liked the remixed version of the Don theme which plays with the car chase sequences. Speaking of the car chase sequences, one of them reminded me of the sequence in Bourne Supremacy, where Matt Damon races through Goa.
9.) I am not such a avid movie watcher that I can comment on direction or any of the other technical points in the movie, but from the point of view of a viewer, it definitely looked good in all of those areas, even in the special effect sequences with both SRKs in the same scene.
Ok, I think I pretty much covered all that I felt made Don definitely a movie worth watching and not as bad as its made out to seem by the reviews. There are interesting twists, and a lot of style. So much style that like somebody said before, I wish I could live in a Farhan Akhtar movie coz its so great to wear amazing clothes, look great and live pretty interesting lives!
In conclusion, DON is a great movie and it’s worth the watch. Just, don’t look at it through the tinted viewpoint of having been an avid fan of the earlier one.
