Don 2: What I think of it

Don 2 was probably one of the most anticipated movies of 2011. Especially with Farhan Akhtar again as the director of this sequel to the 2006 hit, Don. And boy, was I excited! I had got my tickets booked a week in advance and was really looking forward to it. The fact that it was Christmas only added to the excitement.

The film begins to an explanation as to why the European drug lords are hatching a plan, in an expensive yatch somewhere in the middle of the ocean, to have Don eliminated. Don (Shah Rukh Khan) is still at large, and rules the drug mafia. It then moves to Thailand, with a suave Don tackling, alone, about 10-20 odd bad guys who have been hired by the European drug lords to eliminate him. Of course, Don walks away with only minor cuts and bruises.

Then comes Interpol officer Roma (Priyanka Chopra) who is still hunting for Don. Five years on, looks like Interpol has made little progress in tracking Don. Her boss Malik, played by veteran actor Om Puri, shocks her with his retirement news. However, just as he was about to retire peacefully, the Don surprises them by surrendering to the Interpol. 

Jailed, Don is thrown to the same high-security prison where his arch-rival from the prequel, Vardhaan (Boman Irani) is lodged. Don convinces Vardhaan to team up with him and escape with him. They plan their escape meticulously and do that successfully. If I calculated correctly, then it takes the two of them only about a week to prepare and make good their escape. Makes you wonder if high-security prisons are really that easy to break out of! Anyway, let's take that in good humor and move on.

Following the pretty easy escape, Don finds time to unwind with Lara Dutta who gets to play Don's eye candy this time around. The film then moves to Berlin and that is where the rest of the film focuses on. His plan is age-old : to lay his hands on the note chaapney wali machine so that he can print money and become, as he says, "billionaires" (I thought he was one already!). In his quest, Don assembles a motley crew of members including Sameer (Kunal Kapoor) who is a talented hacker and "is a big fan" of the Don, and Jabbar (Nawab Shah), a hitman who is in Don's team for sheer muscle power.

The Don has a plan, but how well does it work? Who are on his side in reality, and who turns into betrayers? Will Roma be able to finally catch Don and put him behind bars by foiling his master plan? That's what the rest of the movie is all about.

Frankly, I was disappointed. I thought the story was, like I said, age-old. Nothing new to lust after some plates that print money (so what if it was Euros in this case). There have been countless villains in the history of Bollywood who've always wanted that. Come on Farhan, was that all you could think of?

The first half is slow, and I'm just being polite. Even though the movie brings in some pace in the second half, it's so haphazard that at one point in time you feel like you're watching another movie altogether.

I didn't like the fact that Shah Rukh Khan is there in 95% of the movie. It almost becomes an overdose after a while.

I didn't like the fact that the Don is a super slick guy who has no fear whatsoever, and who single-handedly can beat the crap out of ten people where each of them is at least twice his size. In fact the Don is so slick, that his slickness starts reeking after sometime. And that makes you stop believing in the character altogether. In the prequel, there was an alternate (double role) character Vijay and that sort of balanced out Don's slick nature. Here, there's no such respite. You've got to tolerate an ever snickering, ever bashful, ever so smart, and ever so calculative Don in every frame of the movie.

I didn't like it at all that the number of lines delivered by Lara Dutta + Kunal Kapoor + Om Puri in the movie were not even half of the dialogues that Don's character had. Lara Dutta, especially, could've as well been mentioned as a guest appearance in the credits, along with Hrithik Roshan who appears for just about two minutes in the movie. Now that I think of it, Hrithik in his two minute appearance gets to say more dialogues than Lara, Kunal and Om Puri combined in the entire movie. What a shame!

I hated the fact that there had to be a love angle in the movie. And the timing of it. And the dripping zabardasti wala romance. It almost killed what little bit of pace the movie had just begun to gain.

Boman Irani is alright. Again, he is playing second fiddle here so what little he gets to say, he makes it believable.

Overall, this movie is like a recipe: 1/3rd from Ocean's series, 1/3rd from Bourne series, and final 1/3rd from the Bollywood archives. For me, it just didn't work.

I can only rate this movie 2 out of 5. 

Oh and by the way, please don't spend that extra hundred bucks for the so-called 3D effect. There isn't any.