Don

Chandra Barot’s Don was never a classic. It was an all-out masala potboiler of the ’70s that had a unique campy feel and immense entertainment value. Remember the climax in the graveyard with the good guys fighting the goons while playing ‘catch the red diary’? That crucial red diary needed to be retained by the good guys as it contained vital information about the dreaded mafia gang. Farhan Akhtar turns this red diary into a CD and does away with the graveyard scene. Result: the fun is gone.

Farhan updates Don for the 21st century by making it stylish, be it the locales, the clothes, the sets or the shot-taking. In keeping with the increasingly global times, he also shifts the action from Mumbai to Malaysia. He then lends it a languid, self-indulgently moody feel. It makes for an enjoyable film in its own way. But when you compare it to the original, you realise that a B-grade subject matter like Don, which is all about a country bumpkin lookalike posing as a mafia king to help the police infiltrate the gang, which is all about hidden vaults and strange safes, somehow deserved the goofy story-telling of the original. The sophisticated sheen of Farhan robs it of its inherently clunky charm. More so, because Farhan’s style is reminiscent of Hollywood—Con Air, Face Off, Matrix.

The surface sheen apart, Farhan retains much of the original scenes, right till that shot of Helen’s fingers moving up Big B’s back. And it says much for the appeal of the original that the maximum claps from the audience came for the moments and dialogues which are a straight lift from the original, be it a song like Yeh mera dil pyaar ka diwana or the dialogues like "Don ko pakadna mushkil hi nahin namumkin hai." Farhan tries to add a twist in the end and puts in some shots like Don lighting a cigarette only to extinguish it to say, "It Kills". Or when Kareena volunteers to pick up his mobile, he stops her: "No it’s mine." Wish there were more. Another disappointment: SRK doesn’t get into the swimming pool as did Big B with Zeenat Aman.