Don-the Chase Begins

Farhan Akhtar entertains you with technology, photography, plot, music and. of course, Don

Have you seen Don-The Chase Begins? The plot was vastly different from the original, with only the title being common. And perhaps the best draw to the film. Director Farhan Akhtar perhaps doesn't know just how to copy a masterpiece, and so left it to some unimaginative director to do someday, and went on to make a masterpiece quite different from the original.

This movie, however, lacked many things: the towering personality of Amitabh Bachchan which was particularly felt in the Khaike Banaras paan wala number. Shahrukh Khan loses out in appeal to AB first because of his diminutive size (in comparison) and though he tries to make up in meanness, he falls short vastly.

His punch line Don ko maarna mushkil hi nahin, namumkin hai is said with characteristic SRK élan, but neither does anything in the mind of the audience nor to his heart. Kareena Kapoor did a wonderful dance and song number, and was good in her cameo role that did bring back good memories of Helen's titillating dance to the same number.

Priyanka Chopra, out for revenge, is good with her stunts, and renders a decent performance. But the story goes for a toss, somewhat halfway through the movie, so much so that the four of us who saw the movie together all had a different version of the story as it unfolded.

When country bumpkin Vijay is brought in to play Don while the latter lay in hospital, no one but the audience knows that he is wide-awake and listening to the grand plot being made by his bedside. We think that perhaps Vijay was the one to take revenge against ACP D' Silva and eventually hand him over to the police, but two of my family refutes this. "Oh, but wasn't that the real Don?" asked one of us, and heated discussions followed.

I confess to being completely muddled by the sequence of events-i.e. was it Don who exchanged places and went about killing all those who hated and cheated him, or was it Vijay? Did the switch take place in the early part of the movie or after revenge is well and truly taken by Vijay? Did Vijay grow into Don's shoes or was it Don all along, masquerading as the new improved Vijay?

Questions, questions, questions! So many questions loomed large that I gave up "the chase" to know the true story of the real Don and was happy to see a film with fantastic effects-fights, music, dance and song, photography, etc.

Akhtar's brilliant use of technology slaps you right in the face just as the real Don does on occasion with his goon gang. His film is brilliant in its technique, there's no doubt of that, as Akhtar's story goes across Mumbai and our national borders to Singapore.

Whether real or fake, Don lives in real style and is up to date with all the latest gizmos that keep him that one step ahead of the bumbling police-a far cry from reality in Singapore. Intrigue, machinations, plans, escape routes, song, dance and a dash of romance pepper this highly enjoyable movie-if you don't really care which Don did what.

There is a high level of consistency of performances-whether the bit role artistes or the very prominent ones, and each one does his or best naturally, living the role as it were. The sting in the tail about the true identity of the Don we see at the end is brought home to us by Isha Koppikar, who plays the jealous lover of the real Don. She has a wicked gleam in her eye of having got the man she always loved, after conquering him from the wicked clutches of Priyanka Chopra.

But at the end of the movie, that's the catch: are we looking at the real Don with his lady love? Is she right or are we? Confusion abounds as the movie ends abruptly with Don-fake or genuine-saying once more, "Don ko maarna mushkil hi nahin, namumkin hai." Are we right in being confused or are we just downright stupid? Is director Akhtar watching us from somewhere and having the last laugh at our confusion?

Not fair, Farhan, not fair.