“Heere jo lagte hain woh mumkin hai angaare ho. Chingari lagte hai jo ho sakta hai taare ho,” husks Usha Uthup in Don 2 and the gold dusted line reminds you why Javed Akhtar was the other half of a legendary dialogue writing team that had understood to perfection, when to pull punches, when to pause, when to let the drama flow, when to say everything in one crisp punchline.
And even though Farhan Akhtar is a worthy heir, the lines in Don 2, though paying a lavish tribute to the idea and mythology of Don, created by Salim Javed and Chandra Barot in 1978, seem..for want of a better word..forced and tired. There is a point in the film where Don after having pulled some strings is about to say something and you pray, being the fan like Farhan Akhtar of the 70’s Hindi films, “Don’t..please don’t say…’Ab mujhe koi nahi rok sakta.’ Please!” And that is exactly what Don says, trying to bring back the age of one liners that became cult memories but somehow only succeeding in reminding you just how effortlessly cool the original Don was and just how, despite tacky sets and childish gags ( the red diary, Pran walking between two buildings on a rope with his two kids, Vijay taking on a posse of villains with a swinging lathi), every line hit home, every character registered and Don, Roma and Vijay became iconic.
Farhan Akhtar’s sensibilities are faultless. He visualises a film like a Hollywood young gun and he has immense respect for commercial Hindi films because he knows how hard it is to get the idiom right. It is a killer cocktail of influences that has held him in good stead. Here too, right from the word go, you know he is having fun because he is reliving memories of films he has enjoyed. The Die Hard series…the Mission Impossible series (with a mandatory mask scene and an impossible break in that a wrong breath can mar), possibly Sean Connery in The Rock, possibly elements from Entrapment. Bond. Even perhaps a film like The Great Gambler where Amitabh Bachchan in a double role tested the patience of his staunchly loving audience by hopping from one exotic location to another, doing stuff no one really understood.
There is a copious sense of cool in Akhtar’s cinema. In this film too, the characters are cut midstride to reduce walking time. Things move with the pace of a breathless video game. The camera even romances moving cars and things that blow up in pieces. The colour palette is modern, minimalistic. The silhouettes edgy. The car chase spectacular and the action flawless. Yet you know something is amiss when the only thing that connects with you is Kalyan Ji Anand Ji’s hypnotic hook that hasn’t stopped playing in your head since the time you were 10-years-old.
Shah Rukh Khan. He is a star, sure. A hugely charismatic, intelligent star. But, here is the problem. His performance in every scene, in every frame, is an orchestration. Not an apt time to remember AB but remember how self-possessed and poised his Don was? Khan’s face never grows still. His eyes go aslant, his mouth curls, his smile goes side ways, his head tilts and he can’t stop talking. His Don is too full of himself, too self-conscious, too eager to impress.
The Don he is inspired by chose his words carefully and wielded power without rubbing it in. Real power does not jump up and down or strut to be noticed. Khan enjoys this role immensely but in a song sequence, when multiple shadows strike a pose just like him and he throws dice on the table with the confidence of someone who rules even luck, you sigh at the overkill. Khan looks great with his muscled physique rippling though vests and in the layers of stylish clothing perfect for a Berlin winter but there is no chilling menace, no sense of lurking danger around him. When he is about to crush a foe and says, “Main tumpe koi dabav nahin daalna chahta,” you know that the line would have made Akhtar chuckle on paper. In the film, it does not crackle because the man who says it, somehow ends up adding an extra layer of interfering mannerisms to it.
Khan has done menace before in cult films we do not have to name because we know them and the moments in them when Shahrukh became Shahrukh Khan. That moment in Darr when he screams in futile agony in the woods. That primal scream is still a favourite image of auto drivers who get it painted on their back flaps. Or that moment when blood oozing from his mouth, and inches away from death, he is looking into the camera and asking us not to hate him. Though over-the-top, he was so real you wanted to reach out and cuddle him and snatch him away from his Karma. Now he leaves you cold and that makes the film dispassionate too except when something fleeting but real passes between Priyanka Chopra’s Roma and him. Also the whole business of intrigue over currency plates, a hostage drama, painstakingly faking finger prints, hacking into security systems, blowing up vehicles and continent hopping is after a while less of a story and more a montage of slickly shot nothingness.
Priyanka Chopra? There was only one Roma and when she said, “Just a moment please,” and beat a man double her size to impress Don, you knew there would never be another like her. And there is’nt. Kunal Kapoor looks great on a bicycle. Lara Dutta in a gold gown. But yes, this maybe the continuation of a franchise but the bottomline is this. There was once a Don who died arrogantly, slowly in the backseat of Iftekhar’s jeep but became an urban legend. He is still alive and well in our memory. And Uss Don Ko Pakadna Mushkil Hi Nahin Namumkin Hai.
Reema Moudgil is the author of Perfect Eight (http://www.flipkart.com/b/books/perfect-eight-reema-moudgil-book-9380032870?affid=unboxedwri )