Movie Review : Don2

Rating : 2.5/5
Genre : Action/Thriller
Year : 2011
Running time : 2 hours 25 minutes
Director : Farhan Akhtar
Cast : Shahrukh Khan, Boman Irani, Lara Dutta, Priyanka Chopra, Om Puri, Kunaal Kapoor, Nawab Shah, Aly Khan, Sahil Shroff
Kid rating : PG-13

I was king of worried that with all the build-up and hype that this film was getting, when it finally released, it would be a stinker. And alas, it is; 50% stinker and 50% snoozefest.

The story is nothing much to write about, another “intricate” caper where Don is trying to steal money printing plates from the DZB mint/bank. Once he has them, he thinks, he’ll be able to print tons of money, before the bank can get new plates and deprecate the old currency. To do this he first lands in jail in order to extricate his old enemy Vardhaan (Boman Irani), so that Vardhaan and Abdul Jabbar (Nawab Shah) can help him in this job. There is also expert hacker Sameer Ali (Kunal Kapoor) to deal with the bank’s computer controlled systems. Svelte beauty Ayesha (Lara Dutta) rounds off the gang. Of course, there’s no fun without the cops in pursuit, so there are Interpol officers Roma (Priyanka Chopra) and Vishal Malik (Om Puri) determined to catch Don and keep him in jail this time.

The film starts off with Don turning himself into Roma and Mallik in Malaysia, and extricating Vardhaan. The rest of the movie deals with the planning and execution of the heist. The first half kind of dragged – I dozed a little right before the intermission. The only thing to do then was to get an antidote – samosas+chutney did the trick; I was awake again! (And here a note about desi theatres in the US – their sound systems suck and the screen is so dark, that I’m glad I’ve remembered to bring my glasses, but then they also offer samosas and chicken rolls – your only succor during a bland film – I clung to my samosa like it was a life-jacket; it was the only spice I was getting in these 2.5 hours!)

This film has good action/fight sequences, but suffers from slack direction. For a thriller, this movie has precious few pulse-pounding moments. It is expected in action films that there isn’t much emotional quotient, but these characters were totally flat. And if Don’s character wasn’t cardboard-ish enough, ShahRukh pushed it over the edge with his expressionless (and wrinkle-free) plastic-surger-ied face. I have often poked fun at his twitching eyebrows, but give me the twitches anyday instead of this plasticky, unnatural face. I noticed this in Ra-One too, but in that SRK was playing a robot anyway, LOL, so it suited the character.

Priyanka has very little to do except glower at Don, or melt in concern when he gets hit. She does get in a couple of kicks though, and a car-chase. There are some romantic undercurrents between her and Don, but these scenes are so poorly scripted that ze sparks – they do not fly (to quote Poirot :-)). Of course not much else does either, in this film, and that’s the honest truth. Lara Dutta  gets to play the moll, and does what a good moll does; looks pretty, nods, smiles and looks on appreciatively.  Boman Irani has the second largest role, but fails to impress. Irani is a good actor, but when I see him get menacing, all I see in my head is the rotund professor of “Three Idiots”. All these top stars clubbed together in this film, and not one to breathe life into it!

This is a very average movie; if it had had lesser stars it might have not been even that. Definitely not quite what I’d expected from a Farhan Akhtar film. The first Don had the double role to keep up the anticipation, but this one doesn’t have that. The only thing which worked for me here was Don’s sneer and snarky one-liners. The rest of the dialogues are terrible and sound fake. When his enemies try to kill him off, they first explain to Don, why they need to do it, and then ask for any “akhri khwaish”. Jaded, anyone ?

This movie was flat, flat, flat. You want to see Don, go see the first one instead!

Kidwise : Pretty clean, this film does have plenty of violence.