Tag: Don 2

By Deepa Gahlot

Don 2

Key Cast: Shahrukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Lara Dutta,Om Puri, Kunal Kapoor, Boman Irani

Directed by: Farhan Akhtar

Produced by: Farhan Akhtar, Ritesh Sidhwani, Shahrukh Khan

Written by: Farhan Akhtar, Ameet Mehta, Amrish Shah

To confuse moviegoers again, Don 2 got madly mixed reviews with the highest rating being 4.5 and the lowest 1.5.  On an average, however, most reviewers gave it 2.5 and everyone agreed that Shahrukh Khan looked cool, the film was slick, the music was mediocre and it was a poor man’s Mission Impossible. Strictly for SRK devotees who, like good fans, don’t necessarily look for logic in his films. The way this film was promoted, logic is the last thing to look for in any case.

The big gush came from koimoi.com’s Komal Nahata and his 4.5 stars. “Don 2 may not give the discerning audience a great high but it will be loved by those who like style, intrigue, suspense and attitude. It will score at the box-office and yield good profits to Reliance Entertainment (worldwide distributors). The producers, of course, have already made a huge profit by selling the worldwide rights and also by getting heavy subsidy from the German government. Business in big cities and multiplexes will be far better than in smaller towns and single-screen cinemas. The film will work wonders in the overseas circuit.”  Let’s see if his prophecies come out to be true.

Nikhat Kazmi of Times of India, expectedly gave it 4 stars and raved, “Don 2 is a classic action/crime thriller that doesn’t let go, even for a moment. More importantly, the plot has been finely crafted, with every twist and turn falling into place like a complicated albeit neat little jigsaw.” But then, she usually raves.

Slightly lower in the ratings game was Bollywood Hungama’s Taran Adarsh with 3.5. “Don 2 rides on star power and brand value. The film has a bland first hour, but the second half takes the film to another level. There’s no denying that a cohesive script would’ve made a world of a difference to the film, but the tremendous hype, star power and the lucrative period (Christmas and New Year celebrations) will make its investors reap a harvest.”

DNA’s Aniruddha Guha goes with 3 stars and writes, “Characters say boring, random things to each other, there’s a pointlessly long dance sequence and the attempt at dialoguebaazi is laughable. What keeps Don 2 alive, then, is its pulsating action.”

Surprisingly, India Today’s Kaveree Bamzai also gives it a generous 3 and writes, “The movie seems to have been made only to allow the actor to say and do all the things he ever wanted, be it a James Bond and Ethan Hunt rolled into one. What it does come across as finally is a Mission Impossible meets Abbas Mustan.”

IBN Live’s Rajeev Masand gives it the more-or-less standard 2.5. “Don 2 is nicely shot, and there are moments where Shahrukh Khan is riveting. But that’s not enough to hold your interest for well over two hours…even the actor’s most loyal fans will find themselves yawning. I’m going with a generous two out of five for director Farhan Akhtar’s Don 2. Although packed with fast cars and bikes, this is one slow ride.”

Aseem Chhabra writing in rediff.com: “For an action film with the central plot setting us up for a robbery inside a major bank, Don 2’s pacing is very slow. Coupled with that, the script explains everything to us step-by-step. And if anyone was paying attention, following the convoluted plot where Don always manages to sweet charm the morons at Interpol, in the last five minutes Akhtar sums up the film with a quick recap, revealing many more details that were never shown to us before.  It is an old fashioned gimmick to make the audience say “Wow, we were fooled!”

Shubhra Gupta of Indian Express: “Don 2 needed an energized, crackling plot. What it has, in almost too much abundance, is SRK dripping dimpled coolth. But cool can only take you so far.”

Piyali Dasgupta of NDTV.com writes: “There’s an easy way to describe Don2 without any spoilers. Think of great action flicks from the Lethal Weapon, Die Hard and MI4 series. Shake them up. Replace Nakatomi Plaza with Berlin’s leading bank and there it is – Don 2, a Bollywood take on great action flicks where Shahrukh wants to show that being a bad-ass is fun.”

Shubha Shetty Saha of Mid-day was not impressed either. “There’s one thing that irks me the most in Bollywood action thrillers, and Don 2 carries the tradition. The smart moves by the characters is tediously explained again and again to show how the move was engineered, thereby diluting the whole effect. The audience is treated like a four-year-old brat, who doesn’t concentrate and forgets what has been told to him five minutes back. Subtlety is an art and moreover, we are not as dumb as you think. Wish the filmmakers instead concentrated on filling those gaping loopholes.”

Finally, nailing it, Mayank Shekhar of Hindustan Times gives it 1.5 and says, “It (the first Don) was Vijay’s story. Salim-Javed’s tight script had a striking plot. The writers here have sub-plots. They continue to stretch and add thought to thought. The picture promises to never end. It gets hard to carry on with inane inventiveness, when you just couldn’t care less.”