CURRY BEAR

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Don 2. I don’t mean the spoilers you put on your car to make yourself feel cool. If you haven’t seen the movie yet and don’t want me to ruin it for you, then don’t read this shit any further!

Like every Bollywood fan, I had to go see Don 2. To be honest, I’m against remakes of any Amitabh movies. There are some things in life, like private parts of little children, that you’re not suppose to touch. I didn’t enjoy the 2006 Don because I come from old-age Bollywood. To me, there is no Don after Amitabh. I know this will piss-off the little fan-girls on my site who grew up watching romantic SRK movies and love everything he does. But you know what SRK fan-girls & fan-boys, I’m #TeamSalman anyway. When I first heard of SRK taking over as the role of Don back in 2006, I wanted to put a bullet through my head. I just knew that SRK was going to bring his famous SRK traits to Don. And you know what? He did exactly that. However, to be fair I did like that Farhan Akhtar changed the movie slightly and took it in a new direction. The twist keeping Don alive the whole time was indeed very clever. I’ll give the man props for that. After all, this is the same man who gave us Dil Chahta Hai.

It’s been 5 years since Don came out & 33 years since the original Don. I remember watching the original Don in the theaters. It was a Bollywood masala movie at it’s finest. The intro of the 1978 Don was like tripping on acid. Goddamn I’m old. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the sequel to 2006′s Don. They did a nice job with the trailers. It was a bit mysterious. Don is in jail. He’s out of jail and trying to steal some shit. He’s jumping from a building. There’s gunfire. There’s a car-chase. There’s explosions. Don is on a motherfucking boat. Guy-who-made-this-trailer, you did a good job with Don 2.

The Plot:
Where do I begin with Don 2′s plot. This is a movie that could have been truly original. The writers didn’t have to stick to the plot of the original Don anymore. They could have taken this movie anywhere they wanted and built upon the “Don” character. But what do they fucking do? They copy bits & pieces of several Hollywood movies and in the process, take away the essence of what the character of Don is all about.

The movie starts off with Don in control of Asia’s drug market. But like every ambitious evil man, he’s got his sight set on taking control over the European drug market. The people who control the European drug market, however, decide to eliminate Don. And Don wants to eliminate them. THIS RIGHT HERE!!!! THIS THIS THIS!!!! OH MY GOD THIS!!!! YOU FUCKERS!!! THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE MOVIE PLOT!!! The movie could have focused on how Don takes over the European drug market by eliminating the bad guys in charge of the drug cartel. This could have made the movie so much better.

But noooooooooooo! Instead we get Don trying to steal golden plates that look like Cadbury bars. Don wants printing plates for 50 & 100 Euro bills from a German bank so he could print counterfeit money. Yes, folks, that is the entire fucking movie in a sentence. Don 2 is not an action-thriller. It’s a fucking heist movie. They changed the genre like it’s yesterday’s underwear.

I can’t say Don 2 is truly an original movie. Like most Bollywood action flicks, it has borrowed elements from a thousand different works of Hollywood. If Mission Impossible, Oceans 11, Prison Break and every heist movie ever made decided to have a Kama-Sutra style orgy, the end result would be Don 2. Shit, half the movie felt like I was watching Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol again, which only came out a week before. Don spends the entire movie assembling a team to come up with a plan to steal Euro printing plates from a bank. He succeeds in his goals and deceives everybody. He finally gets his hands on the Euro printing plates and now is a billionaire. Then towards the end, they show one tiny scene of how the police take out the European drug cartel with the help of Don’s info and leaving him in control of the European drug market. That’s it. Eliminating the European drug cartel & taking over that drug market should have been the fucking movie assholes!!! Fuck stealing some printing plates!!

The Characters:
Don – This movie should have been about the character Don. Don is a bad-ass. That’s it, plain & simple. Unfortunately, it feels as though Don 2 is more about SRK than Don. It’s like they’ve altered the character of Don to fit SRK’s style of acting. They’ve given him cheesy one-liners to deliver in SRK style. He smiles & laughs way too much for Don! Don is a bad-ass! Don is not suppose to be that happy! He is suppose to be serious, smooth and fucking scary. Watch the original Don with Amitabh and observe his “Don” character before Vijay takes over. He rarely cracks a smile. Heck, even Vijay pretending to be Don was bad-ass. For those who love SRK and his style of acting, I’m sure this is no big deal. But I grew up on Amitabh’s Don and SRK’s Don should be an extension of the character he portrayed, not a fucking character assasination.

Here are some things that Don would never do:
- Don wouldn’t ever tell a man he has beautiful eyes.
- Don would never say “I like love stories”.
- Don wouldn’t keep asking Roma whether her and Arjun have a thing. Even if she did have a thing for Arjun, that wouldn’t stop him because he is motherfucking Don! Goddamn it! This Don feels like he was created by Karan Johar.

The more I see SRK’s Don, the more I miss Amitabh’s Don. It’s difficult not to compare them. Amitabh’s Don had swagger and a strong voice to match. It all came naturally to him. Many people don’t realize what Don means to some of us who grew up watching the original. The way Amitabh’s Don carried himself, the way he kicked-ass and the lines he delivered had us all wanting to grow up to be Don. Don has many famous lines that are still quoted today (“Don Ko Pakad Na Mushkil Hi Nahi, Namumkin Hai“). My favorite line, however, is “Don ke dushmano ki sabse badi galti yeh hai, ki woh Don ke dushman hai“.

In the new Don, I feel like Raj Malhotra from DDLJ is playing Don. I’m so used to seeing SRK in romantic films like DDLJ, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai & Dil To Pagal Hai that it becomes hard to take him seriously as Don. I wish he had brought more of his bad-ass SRK from the good old Baazigar & Anjaam days. Of course, the SRK fan-girls love to see him on screen. They don’t give a shit about the character of Don. They’ll clap whenever he comes on screen. Meanwhile I’m sitting in the corner watching one of my favorite iconic characters of Bollywood get destroyed frame by frame. I love cheesy one-liners in Bollywood, but no one delivers them like Salman Khan. This is why I’m #TeamSalman.

And why the fuck does Don sway side to side when he walks? I mean is that his new signature walk? That does not make Don look cool. He looks like a skyscraper swaying side to side during an earthquake.

Roma – I have no idea why Priyanka Chopra was in this movie. It’s like they just wanted to torture this poor girl. First Don kills her brother in the first movie. Then in Don 2 they try to show a romantic connection between Don & Roma. Don toys with her emotions by trying to get her to feel something for him. It’s so fake. But props to Don because has a really good game to get a girl to fall in love with him after killing her brother.

By the end of the movie, Roma finds out that Don has received immunity in Germany and then she gets shot. I swear in Don 3 Roma is going to commit suicide. The romance between Roma & Don feels about as real as a stripper’s boobs. The audience I saw the movie with couldn’t help but laugh at Roma’s concern for Don when he gets shot in the lobby of the bank. I almost felt like yelling at the screen, “Bitch! That fool killed yo brothaaaa and you want to suck his dick?!?” The Roma played by Zeenat Aman would have put a knife in Don’s eyeballs.

Vardhaan – Oh man, this guy. Don breaks him out of prison because he has something he needs. Then the rest of the movie he’s just one of Don’s pawns. He was probably one of the better side characters. He brought some humor to the movie. But his role is way over-shadowed by Don. As awesome as Boman Irani is as an actor, this role just didn’t offer much for him. They basically just wrote the character thinking, “Yeah this guy will give some jokes here and there & maybe a small challenge to Don at the end. They’ll have a fight scene and he’ll get his ass kicked. That’s it.” Don already kicked his ass in the first movie, so as a villain he is not that great in the sequel. This is why I feel like they should have focused on a movie plot where Don goes after the European drug cartel guys. Vardhaan is like a recycled villain in Don 2.

Sameer – So this guy is a new character. He’s a hacker. He also tells Don how he he’s such a big fan of him. Does Don have some Facebook fan page that we are not told about? How does some random hacker who is not involved in the drug trade get infatuated with Don? He’s in the movie because every heist movie needs some token techie computer guy who can control shit from a laptop. And in Don 2, Sameer is that guy. I think he filled his role well in Don 2. One thing that I was disappointed was that the twist with Sameer betraying Don was predictable. I think everybody knew it was part of an act. I’m sure he’ll be a part of Don 3 and I hope they give him an even bigger role because Kunal Kapoor is one of the finest young actors in Bollywood who is also a bit underrated.

Ayesha – I thought Lara Dutta was replacing Isha Koppikar’s character Anita from the 2006 Don. But she is actually a brand new character. Her character is pretty similar to that of Isha’s in the first movie. She’s Don’s um…secretary? I’m pretty she is doing a lot more than just being his secretary. And Goddamn does she look hot in the song “Zaara Dil Ko Thaam Lo” in the golden dress. When I get a Blu-Ray of Don 2, I’m going to have her booty shaking video on loop for hours.

There’s a cameo in the movie by Hrithik Roshan. Since Hrithik is such a nice friend of Farhan’s, he agreed to do a special cameo and take no money. Hrithik takes off his mask to reveal that he is SRK. It was something cool to see in a Bollywood movie, but it’s so hard not to think of Mission Impossible. What I don’t fucking understand is, if SRK is wearing a Hrithik mask, why does his voice change? In Mission Impossible they explain it to you with the voice synthesizer Tom Cruise uses. Most Bollywood movie-goers wouldn’t care for that detail, but I do! Why does SRK sound like Hrithik? How did he alter his voice? Explain that shit to me bitch!

The best thing about Don 2 are the action scenes. Don 2, for Bollywood standards, is a benchmark. You won’t see stupid cars exploding and going straight up in the air like all other Bollywood action movies *ahem*cough*Singham*cough*ahem. Don 2 is at Hollywood level with the action scenes. The car chases are nicely executed. The fighting scene at the end in the bank is also well done. Priyanka Chopra doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu moves to take down bad guys is so sexy. You would think it’s a fight scene from a Hollywood movie. I give props to Farhan Akthar and the action/stunt team. They have really raised the bar for action scenes in Bollywood. Thank you for not making any retarded action scenes that end up on YouTube and make white people laugh at us. There are some scenes that are a bit cheesy, like Don bungee-jumping from a building. It’s like, I know Don is always 5 steps ahead of his enemies, but does the dude always walk around with bungee-jumping gear underneath his clothes?

One thing they did really well was the intro to Don 2. That scene is a homage to the original Don when Amitabh meets Raj Singh and his goons in an open field and kills them with an explosive briefcase. Don’s intro in the boat is sick and I’m sure all SRK fans must have gone crazy. I was in a theater and the girls couldn’t stop screaming. I saw a YouTube video clip of a theater where people were standing up and applauding.

The music of Don 2 is pretty blah. I love the Don tune in the intro when he first appears on a boat. I wish they would play that tune when I make an entrance at a party. But after that, there is nothing to make me sing in the bathroom by myself. One of the tracks sounds like it was taken from the Ocean’s 11 soundtrack. However, the background score is pretty well made. The tempo matches the action scenes and really brings out the excitement. But other than that, the music doesn’t have much to offer.

So is Don 2 a good movie?
Yes and no.

Yes because as a heist movie, it is pretty good. If you don’t care much for the character of “Don” and just want to see a nice movie with action scenes & explosions that has never been done in a Bollywood movie, then Don 2 will entertain you. So go grab some popcorn and watch SRK kick ass. And if you’re an SRK fan, you’ll enjoy this movie because you love anything he does. He could be in a movie where he kicks babies in the head and you’ll still love him. Here is how I picture all you SRK fans:

I also say no, Don 2 not a good movie because I love the Don character. It is an iconic Bollywood character. Some of us who grew up on old-school Bollywood were mesmerized by Amitabh’s Don and it has a special place in our heart. I was never too keen on SRK resurrecting the role of Don. When I first heard of him playing Don, I knew I’d be disappointed. Think of all those Star Wars fans finding out that they’re remaking Star Wars starring Justin Beiber as Luke Skywalker and Edward Cullen as Han Solo. That’s what it feels like for some of us.

Don 2 is a completely different movie. It has gone far away from the essence of what Don is about. They could have built upon the character and made him even more bad-ass. But instead, they turned it into a heist movie and added a twist at the end to show how Don is always several moves ahead of others. If I wanted stupid twists, I’d go see an M. Night Shyamalan movie. Farhan Akthar has been quoted saying that Don 2 is a movie by fans for fans. To be honest, real fans of Don would have never remade the movie in the first place.