Don vs Don

Was watching the movie Don yesterday, the one with Amitabh as Don. Couldn’t resist the temptation to compare Big B’s Don and that of SRK. The makers of the new one ask viewers to avoid comparisons but when you dare attempt a remake of a classic, cult movie you can’t escape the comparisons.

When engrossed in the original Don one tends to believe it’s a rehash of some English movie but the biggest surprise is that it’s an absolute original script by Salim-Javed. Unfortunately they both parted ways and the gap they left is still open today. I wonder if the director of Don Chandra Barot made another movie after the resounding success of Don. But in this venture he was in awesome control.

Let’s get into the comparisons then,
The script of the original is absolutely tight and moves so fluidly, the pace of the movie is superb. Farhan Akhtar reworked on the script and gave it a lot of twists and turns. But the pace of the new Don was so slow that it felt the director was stuck between 2 modes. While this concept worked well with Dil Chahta Hai where Akshaye Khanna and Dimple Kapadia had those slow moving scenes, this just did not work with Don.

The background music of both the movies is extremely good but Farhan missed a trick by ignoring a great piece of music where the syndicate moves the unconscious Don from the hospital by dodging the police. That was one hell of a scene in the original movie and the music added to the pace of the scene.

Songs from both the movies were good and I feel the song Main Hoon Don from the new movie scores over the old one. Another scoring point was Khaike Paan. SRK knew he would be under the scanner for this particular song but he did a fabulous job.

The biggest mistake I believe was the casting. The character artists were not correctly chosen as audiences couldn’t identify with most of the characters like in the old Don for e.g.: Shakal, Mac etc. And how can one give the role of Pran’s JJ to Arjun Rampal?? Rampal hasn’t yet proved his mettle as an actor and he’s given this job.

Big B and SRK, too much has been said about them but SRK did a good job trying to live up to Big B’s image. But it’s tough to imagine SRK as Don like it’s impossible to imagine anybody else as Gabbar. So Big B get ready to face the music!!