Farhan, the King and that thing called Don 2

Every once in a while a movie comes which proves to be the defining point in the careers of all those associated with it. I hope that is not the case with Don 2. If it is, then it probably it would be the last movie that Farhan Akhtar and Shahrukh Khan would make. Farhan Akhtar, the genius whose first film was and remains one of the best Indian films about friends and coming of age in India has consistently been falling down as a director even as his acting has been slowly but gradually improving. Perhaps now, Akhtar has reached the point, where he should give up on direction and dedicate his life to becoming a better actor because it seems he can never become a director as good as that of Dil Chahta Hai. In fact, it would seem quite a task to even become as good as the guy who made Lakshya. I think his sister is a much more competent director and it won’t hurt to divide the creative jobs fairly in the family. It should be good for all parties concerned including the people who pay to watch movies.

Sadly, things do not seem so optimistic for the guy who used to go by the name of Shahrukh Khan and now has renamed himself as the King. The King used to be a quite likeable guy and except for a minority of condescending sophisticated Chocolate Boy fans, he was clearly the leading star for a long time. Then he got hit by a calamity called the 40s. It hit his other contemporary Khans also but they somehow turned it to their advantage. Sadly, the King was not so lucky or perhaps he had got too much of Tiger Blood to realize what was happening to him. Instead of changing his acting style or roles he seems to have bought himself a brand new face. It’s supposed to make the King look young but anyone who has seen Don 2 can confirm that he looks more like a wax statue of Ranbir Singh. Sadly, it would seem that Ranbir Singh or his wax statute if and whenever it’s made could have done a better job here. The King’s last few films have given enough opportunities for the Aamir Khan fans to mock him and now it has even become cooler to be a fan of that Body Builder guy over a fan of the King. His fans, at least the rational ones and not the fanatic ones had more or less given up hopes when the King acted as a retard and robot/computer game thing in his last two movies and made it difficult to distinguish which was which. With Don 2, things have been complicated even further and all hopes seem to have been lost. Long live the King; the King seems to have died a while back.

(Spoiler alert. But really there is not much to spoil in the first place.)

So the thing about this thing called Don 2 is that it’s a very irritating movie but if you could just tolerate the ‘in your face stupidity’, hamming and screeching, you would be rewarded with a movie which is really and quite unintentionally hilarious. The dialogues are not only an exercise in spelling the obvious, as in saying O-B-V-I-O-U-S but almost a work of art.

Picture this, Priyanka Chopra gets some snaps of Don’s car in two places. The first one has Aly Khan and the other doesn’t. She concludes that……..(can you guess?)…. the person who was with Don must have got off somewhere in between. Her co-worker, and ‘want to be boyfriend’/ ‘they gave me thankless lines’ guy played by some ‘part time model’/ ‘want to be actor’ guy deducts…….(can you guess now?)…… that if someone got off in between, there must be some witness also and all they have to do is find that witness! And true to the letter, they find one and not more than one witness who realizing his responsibility as the sole witness gives enough details to Farhan Akhtar’s computer to generate an image of Aly Khan.

Om Puri has in the recent past done a lot of roles which should be enough to make anyone forget that he is a two times national awards winner (before Arjun Rampal single handedly destroyed their reputation by winning one). But just in case anyone still remembers, Don 2 should delete those memories for ever. In the opening sequence, when he is alone in a capsule lift with Priyanka Chopra, Om Puri tells her that of all the officers that he has worked with, he is going to miss Priyanka Chopra the most. Thankfully, I was watching the movie in a single screen, so the whistles and catcalls that followed did complete justice to the dialogue. In another one of his good dialogues, he tells Don; supposedly the undisputed mafia boss and a ruthless killer as established many times over in this movie and the previous one, to cooperate else a lot of innocents may get killed. In his best scene, towards the end, amongst all the mayhem, blasts and gun battles, Om Puri is seen to be chit chatting with a local firang police guy, presumably enquiring about the drinking holes in the place; when he sees the King, carrying an obviously wounded and bleeding Priyanka Chopra in his arms. His casual remark, and English won’t do justice here is, ‘Arre yeh Roma ko kya ho gaya?’.

The secret to Don’s success and the fall of Corleone family is that as opposed to the Corlones, Don works alone. It seems that every drug delivery he has to take, he goes there personally. No wonder his clients like him but seriously, he must have worked round the clock like this if he has actually become the undisputed head of the Asian drug mafia, as he claims to be. Yes, crime pays but hard work in crime pays much more. Don is so short of staff that most of his work seems to be done by his apparent girl friend played by Lara Dutta or maybe she being his only staff also performs the duties of his girl friend.

Another important character in the movie is played by Kunal Kapoor as the guy who has become a mandatory feature in all crime movies post Oceans’ Eleven; the laptop guy. He rides a bicycle and wears and cool hat through out the movie to underline not just his youth and hip-ness but also his innocence and gullibility. The last two qualities are supposed to be also gathered from a random shot of his pregnant firang wife who is also the wallpaper on the laptop used in the heist. Of course, just in case, the heist is not successful and the laptop gets left behind, at least they’ll know who to return it to.

But despite all these brilliant performances, each of which may have been outstanding in a lesser movie, the best acting and casting award in this movie without a doubt goes to a guy who plays a small time Bhai in Germany called JABBAR. That’s right. His name is not Jabbar but JABBAR. Practically every time in the movie his name is taken, it is shouted by everyone including himself. Not since Gabbar has a bad guy’s name been spoken with such force. But that’s where the comparisons stop. Compared to Gabbar, JABBAR is a very sweet, simple and gullible guy, not to mention a complete idiot. From the King to Boman Irani, everyone bosses over him although he is the one who owns all the men with guns and bombs and clearly appears to have the physical strength to rip apart the King and Irani with his one arm. Is it such a crime to be stupid?! In a classic scene which deserves to be preserved in memory, the King is about to crush JABBAR with a crane when the King makes him an offer to join forces. To which JABBAR replies that he has come there to kill the King! Such bravery couldn’t go unnoticed. Neither could JABBAR’s eh…assets in a body hugging t shirt that he wore through most of the film. Another observation which might have been lost had the movie been watched in a multiplex.

I am reliably informed that the true fans of the King really, like really, like this movie. I can easily understand why. He provides a kind of timelessness in his movies that was till now considered a domain of the Body Builder and Govinda. When he says, ‘I am the King’, you are reminded of the same dialogue as he says it in Om Shanti Om and probably in My Name is Khan and that robot/ video game movie as well. Clearly, for his real fans, he is beyond the constraints of time, space and acting.

So as a final word, while MI 4 may give you the cheap momentary thrills of a good action movie, a film like Don 2 will stay etched in your memory for a long, long time and provide you great comfort in those uncomfortable times spent waiting for elevators.

[With critical inputs from Mr. Harsh Parashar]