SRK Movie My Take - Don The Chase Begins Again 'review' (Part 2)

Part 1

You don't think I've finished spazzing about Don B, do you? 80% of this movie was shot in my country. Of course I'm going to boogie all over it like a crazed fangirl.

Also, I've made it a point that when I do a 'review' of any of his movies, I'll do it while going through the scenes in real time. That's the only way I think I can do justice to them. I'm telling you very pointedly though that every 'review' I do is heavily SRK-centric so if you can't stand a large dose of SRK lurve, keep away. Don't say you haven't been warned.

For people who are not familiar with my 'review' style, it's just a technical term I adopt to mask my obsession to babble/spazz about Shah Rukh and any interesting project he gets his beautiful claws on. It doesn't have a particular format.

So for any of you who thinks I should have written it in a specific format to fit it into a review category, I want to make a word play of what Shah Rukh has said regarding this sort of issue, "If you have a problem then you make your own review and write it the way you want." (hehe)

Let me begin where it all started this time. In romantic Paris:

• For a cool killer, Don B has a pretty boring ringtone.
• I love the fact that the transaction was done in the same building as a ballet school. What irony...
• As Don B is being frisked, he makes this annoyed smiling face. That reminds me of how Shah Rukh said he didn't like being frisked at US airports just because his name is Khan. I guess he was drawing from some surplus emotions in his real life experiences for that scene
  
• I love the way he says "Keep it". In fact, I love the way Don B says pretty much all of his lines. I really miss his dialogue delivery when Vijay comes into the picture. I'm like.. give me my Don back!!! It doesn't matter that Vijay was also played by Shah Rukh. The two characters are poles apart that the only reason why I wasn't so blah about Vijay is because I knew from the beginning that it's Don B all along (thanks to wiki spoilers). So watching Don B plays Vijay to fool everyone, from the police officers to his mafia buddies, has its droll moments.. :P
  
• Don B is so polite, hai na? His insistence for every request to be followed by "..., please," tickles my easily amused bones. I did say in Part 1 that I love Shah Rukh's characterization of Don B. Despite him saying he knows nothing about characterization, his recent movies have characters with quite a few distinct traits that you can recall easily. According to me, if the audience can immediately remember some quirks a character has, then the actor has assayed the role quite well. And Don B brims with memorable quirks
  
• The... "Do you know that there are 36 points on the human body, if struck right, could prove fatal" ...is so random! LOL. But it's fortunate that I'm a kung fu buff, so I do get the reference to the human body pressure points. This type of thing was also highlighted in 'Kill Bill' and discussed quite involvedly in a lot of sites, for example this one where some creeps actually practiced it on their friends, or maybe it's all exaggeration. I think this reference comes out in Farhan's Don because their fight choreographer practices shaolin kung fu
  
• I love the first fight scene like OMG! I wish it goes on longer, like in Hong Kong kung fu movies. I love Don B's moves, especially when he breaks the guy's vertebrae. The crunchy sound is so fulfilling. A question though... if someone is blown up, won't his blood, meat and bones be sprayed in all directions along with everything else around him? The glass shards look too white and clean IMO. But that's just gory details I like to notice, so don't mind me
  
• Okay, so the defining moment for me is when Don B shoots the guy in the head. It was like.. wham! Instant love.

I would like to know how Vardhaan infiltrates the (Malaysian? Indian?) police force and how long has he been holing himself in there? Anyway... back to Don B and his golf missiles.

• You know, I feel like memorizing the entire dialogue of that beach-golf scene and deliver it exactly the way Shah Rukh did it. It's just so... delicious! I think this is my most favourite murder scene ever in a movie. Cool, humorous, and unrepenting. "Terrible shoes!" LOL. I just love that one. And I repeat, I like it that Anita laughs at what Don B says about the murder as if it's the most amusing thing in the world. I want her in the sequel, Farhan!
• I want Priyanka to beat up some practice partners in the dojo... or at least make mincemeat out of a Wing Chun wooden dummy... not just showing off some unconvincing moves all by her own boring self
  
• The Ramesh murder scene draws a clear line between a bad guy and an evil entity. Don B is the latter. He's like our Dr. Lecter when he's conversing with the poor guy, the difference is he doesn't pounce on Ramesh and tear the guy's ear off. This kind of acting is what makes so many fans (and media type too) clamor after SRK to take up villainous roles. No one in Bollywood does a psycho quite like him. Don B is not a typical psycho, of course, but by planning a murder so breezily, carrying it out with such aplomb and not showing remorse afterwards, he does fit the bill of a psycho killer. The difference is, he gets monetary benefit when he kills... something typical psycho killers, who usually kill for self-fulfillment, don't care about and may not even understand
  
• "I'm trying to quit. It kills you..." LOL. Shah Rukh has delivered anti-smoking lines like this in some other movie too, I forgot which one. It amuses me when a smoker gives anti-smoking campaigns, and it amuses me more that anti-smoking societies are always after Shah Rukh to kick the butt. You people don't really care about his health, do you? And if he truly quits, you will lose a celebrity who can give you a free piggyback ride on your road to extreme publicity. Are you sure that's what you want? Hmmph. Sarcasm aside, smoking is fatal for your health, Shah Rukh. I want you to outlast me, or at least die from overwork... not lung cancer
  
• "No, it's mine." ..okay, I know this was lifted from Don A but I prefer the way Shah Rukh delivered it. This is completely my unbiased opinion (lol)
• I have an issue with the whole earth-gold tone of the hotel, their outfit... even their make-up... for the Kamini-Don B scene. The two seem to be buried underneath too much heavy colour. I dunno, maybe it's just me. Also, I don't get what the fascination with Don B's tie being worn inside his shirt is about. But hey, what do I know about fashion?
• Every gesture Don B makes fascinate me. Even the... *who were you calling when you're inside?* ...sign language mesmerizes me to oblivion. Hey, I did warn you that this 'review' is going to be very heavily SRK-centric, didn't I? ;P

Yeh Mera Dil and the death of Kamini

Is that a batik shirt he's wearing? o wow o wow o wow o wow o wow...

The only move I don't understand in the whole choreography is Kareena slithering and stalking about on the ugly brown carpet. I was like.. whaaa? It could have been a big brass bed and I still would have cringed. It's just the way it's done. It degrades her sexy Earth Goddess image and ruins the effect of the scrumptious dress. The rest of the choreography is good and Shah Rukh was of course perfect in the song. Yes, yes... again it's my completely unbiased opinion.

I do think despite his insistence that he doesn't like doing romantic movies and that he doesn't understand romance... he instinctively knows what his female audience likes to see on the hero's face and eyes or how the hero behaves with his heroine. Even in a song that lasts a few minutes he can shine when he has a woman (or several women) draped all over his body. It's what makes him a very effective romantic lead. I'm sorry Shah Rukh, but your romantic image will be stuck in our psyche forever. You'll never be able to overshadow it with any comic, dramatic, macho or psycho portrayal any time soon, or maybe ever.

It's my belief Don B knows the entire time that Kamini is a police informer and a bunch of police officers are about to descend onto his lair. And yet, he's so supremely confident of his ability to get away from the seemingly impossible situation that he humours her amorous advances. I dunno about Don A, who looks as if he's not interested in the opposite sex even when it's in the form of luscious Helen, but Don B is oh-so-ready to get down to business with his lady of the night while waiting for the boys in uniform.

Don B is portrayed here (and throughout his Don scenes and some of Vijay's too) by Shah Rukh to be always edgy, a parting of ways from the cool, expressionless and almost-unresponsive Don A who seems to have it all under control. I prefer how Shah Rukh played it (of course, of course hehe). Don B is a megalomaniac, and megalomaniacs never forget for a second that the world revolves around them... while Don A is a workaholic mafia hitman and he never forgets that his work is never done. That's the difference between them, or at least, that's how I perceived it.

"Selamat malam, gentlemen."

Man, I just can't seem to get over that. And I like the creepy lift door that can't close because of the body stopper. So Asian-horror-film like. Nice one. Whose idea was that?

Don B's mysterious disc

Shah Rukh and his laptop... (lol)

Will someone finally tell me what the bloody hell kind of information is in that disc? Why does Don B make it and almost sacrifice his life to get it (when he was being Vijay), then turn around and tell Anita that it's not important??

I love how he delivers these lines:

• "Ya hamare kam ki... *eyes yummy Priyanka body* ...hai?"
• "Waja?"
• "Mujhe junglee bilia boht pasand hai"
• "She tried to kill me~~~"

Can I say that I absolutely adore the posture Don B adopts when he delivers that... "The biggest mistake Don's enemies can make is to make an enemy of Don" ...line? Every word was lovingly spoken. It's so obvious from the way Shah Rukh treated some lines that he's absolutely crazy over them. I bet he and Farhan went completely ballistic when they were discussing the dialogues and scenes Farhan lifted and modified from the old Don movie.

It's rare for an actor to be able to assay one of his favourite roles by someone he's idolized since childhood, so Shah Rukh is fortunate in that respect. But don't think for a second that he's gonna let us keep comparing between Don A and Don B. The sequel is where he's gonna make us forget that the old movie has even existed. He's gonna 'own' Don and the younger generation will equate Don with Shah Rukh, not Amitabh. That's what he did with Devdas (opinions from SRK-haters and tabloid media type notwithstanding).

What I don't understand annoys the heck out of me

"Nobody says please anymore" ..awww, poor Don LOL.

This whole scene is entirely incomprehensible to me. Even the old movie with its penchant for telling us every itty bitty thing that's going on doesn't give me a clue as to why Don is betrayed or why Don expects to be betrayed. I mean, he wires the whole case with explosives so he must have thought something fishy is going on. But he goes there anyway with a bag full of rupees that he wants to blow up.

Oh, that's another thing I don't get. Is it real money, or does Don come to the meeting with fake money? Frankly, I don't understand a greedy guy (which Don B is) who blows up money. So if it's fake money, what is Don B doing there? That can't be a real transaction, can it? Don B's the type who's absolutely possessive of his reputation. He would not have botched up a deal by conning his clients. I don't like the idea that Don B gets severely injured due to his inability to predict the situation correctly. That sort of incompetence should be reserved for government officials, not crime lords. It doesn't go with the image~~~

Oh, did you know that Shah Rukh did the stunts himself? Yep, including the driving-through-the -great-balls-of-fire sequence. Too bad the camera got burnt to rubble and they lost the footage, otherwise we'd be able to see some cool SRK-in-flames stuff. I'm not sure if he did the whole chase scene though but he did get behind the wheel for some action. His affinity with action stunts scares me (coz I'm a coward when it comes to the people I love. It's okay when I'm the one in the driver's seat though). Please take care of yourself, okay Datuk?

I love the car-chasing part though. Chase scenes usually juggle a lot of logistics issues so I'm always in awe of car/motorcycle chase sequences.

To be continued in Part 3...