Don - The Chase Begins Again
| Don - The Chase Begins Again | |
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| Directed by | Farhan Akhtar |
| Produced by | Ritesh Sidhwani |
| Written by | Javed Akhtar, Salim Khan |
| Starring | Shah Rukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Arjun Rampal, Kareena Kapoor, Isha Koppikar, Boman Irani, Om Puri, Sushma Reddy |
| Music by | Shankar Mahadevan, Ehsaan Noorani, Loy Mendonsa |
| Distributed by | T-Series |
| Release date(s) | October 20, 2006 |
| Language | Hindi |
| IMDb profile | |
For the 1978 Hindi film, see Don (1978 film), for the Telugu film with the same title, see Don (2007 film), for the Dutch film of the same title, see Don (Dutch film). For other uses, see Don.
Don - The Chase Begins Again, directed by Farhan Akhtar, is a remake of the 1978 film, Don. The film was released in India on October 20, 2006 and it was also simultaneously released internationally. The script of the previous film was written by Akhtar's father, Javed Akhtar and Salim Khan (father of Salman Khan).
The film stars Shah Rukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Arjun Rampal, Isha Koppikar and Kareena Kapoor in a special appearance. 80% of the movie was shot in Malaysia, and was filmed around the tropical Langkawi island as well as the towering Petronas Twin Towers and the Jalan Masjid India area, which is the 'little India' of Kuala Lumpur.
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Plot Synopsis
In 2006, the drug trade is booming. The Malaysian Intelligence and Anti-Narcotic Department are called upon for assistance by their Indian counterparts. There are rumours that a drug gang has recently moved their headquarters to Kuala Lumpur.
The Indian team is headed by DCP DeSilva (Boman Irani) who wants to break the back of the drug operations of a drug lord named Singhania. Also helping him is Malik (Om Puri). He believes that capturing Singania's dangerous and elusive lieutenant, Don, (Shah Rukh Khan), will be the most effective way of accomplishing this. Don's gang consist of Narang (Pawan Malhotra) and Anita (Isha Koppikar). Soon, Roma (Priyanka Chopra) joins them but she has other plans - kill Don. Don was responsible for killing her brother Ramesh as well as his fiancee, Kamini (Kareena Kapoor).
During a chase with the police the real Don is critically injured and is captured by DeSilva. He keeps it a secret that he has captured Don, even from his fellow officers, and tracks down a look-alike called Vijay, a lowly singer (also played by Shah Rukh Khan). He asks Vijay to infiltrate Don's gang by pretending to be Don. In return he will make sure that the child Vijay found and adopted, Deepu (who is the son of Jasjit played by Arjun Rampal) gets a proper education. Meanwhile Jasjit who has just been released from prison sets out in search for his son, Deepu, and to get his revenge on DSP DeSilva who arrested him and prevented him from rescuing his wife and child from black mailers, this in turn killed his wife and left his son missing.
DeSilva trains Vijay and admits him in a hospital (in which Don is also admitted and supposedly in coma) to surgically give him all the scars and birthmarks the real Don has on his body. However Don dies of heart failure suddenly in front of DeSilva and the doctors, who are unable to save him. While Vijay is infiltrating Don's gang, DeSilva is captured and killed in a fire blast; and Vijay is forced to run from the police as well as Don's gang members -- pursuing the last piece of evidence (a disc) which has all of Don's criminal activities loaded on it, a disc which can get him out of this mess.
Through various plot twists, Vijay recovers the disc. Eventually, it surfaces that DeSilva is alive and is actually Vardhan, a notorious underground criminal with a grudge against Singhania, Don's boss, and eventually ends up killing him. Vijay arranges a meeting with Vardhan and assists in his capture.
In a final twist, it emerges that the real Don is still alive, and was pretending to be Vijay who he killed and replaced while in the hospital. It was actually Vijay who had died in the hospital of heart failure in front of Vardhan. In the end both Don and his girlfriend Anita (Isha Koppikar) escape, bewildering the police and Roma.
Differences with the original Don
There were some main wrinkles which Farhan Akhtar introduced to differentiate this version from the original. First, DeSilva, instead of Malik, is revealed to be Vardhan; also, Vardhan's brother, Singhania (the other crime lord), is not in the original Don. Secondly, Don was never actually replaced with Vijay, and had manipulated everyone else from the start by actually killing Vijay and putting himself in his place (Don was never caught in the old movie as well). Another thing is that in the old Don, Jasjeet had two kids while in the new Don, Jasjeet has one son. Also, a change in Jasjeet's character was that he was a performer in a circus in the older version of the movie, whereas, in this version he was a computer engineer (systems security).
In original one the officer was DSP Disilva in the new Don it's DCP Desilva.
Cast
- Shah Rukh Khan - Don / Vijay
- Priyanka Chopra - Roma
- Arjun Rampal - Jasjit / J.J.
- Isha Koppikar - Anita
- Boman Irani - DCP DeSilva / Vardhaan
- Kareena Kapoor - Kamini (Special appearance)
- Om Puri - Vishal Malik
- Pawan Malhotra - Narang
- Diwakar Pundir - Ramesh
- Sushma Reddy - Geeta
- Chunkey Pandey - Teja / T.J. Guest Appearance
- Shakeel Khan - Mac
- Anil Vaghela - Singhania
- Shaharudin Thamby -Malaysia police officer
Crew
![Don's Team: [L-R] Ramesh (Diwakar Pundir), Kumar, Narang (Pavan Malhotra), Mac (Shakeel Khan). [S] Anita (Isha Koppikar)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Don_TheChaseBegins_TeamMembers.PNG)
- Director: Farhan Akhtar
- Screenplay: Farhan Akhtar
- Story: Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar
- Dialogue: Farhan Akhtar
- Script: Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar
- Producer: Ritesh Sidhwani
- Music: Shankar Mahadevan, Ehsaan Noorani and Loy Mendonsa
- Choreography: Farah Khan, Saroj Khan, Ganesh Hegde and Rajeev Surti
- Visual Effects: Red Chillies VFX
- Editor: Anand Subaya
- Director of Photography: Mohanan
- Costume Design: Aki Narula
- Line Producer Malaysia: Khabir Bhatia
- Production Manager Malaysia: Shasha Mohd Yusof
- Location Manager Malaysia: Shaiful Azwira Abdul Jabbar
- Talent Coordinator Malaysia: Norafizah Jaja
Music
The film has seven songs composed by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy:
- "Main Hoon Don" - Shaan
- "Yeh Mera Dil" - Sunidhi Chauhan
- "Maurya Re" - Shankar Mahadevan
- "Khaike Paan Banaraswala" - Udit Narayan,Shah Rukh Khan
- "Aaj Ki Raat" - Alisha Chinoy, Mahalaxmi Iyer & Sonu Nigam
- "Don The Theme" - Instrumental
- "Don Revisited" - Midival Punditz
- "Main Hoon Don (Funcinternational Mix)" - DJ Randolph
"Main Hoon Don (Normal/Fncinternational Mix)" is currently #3 (as of February 12, 2007 in The Top 20 songs list compiled by Radio Mirchi 98.3 FM on the basis of album sales, on-air requests and research. It has been on the #1 position for many many weeks. It gained the #1 position on September 11, 2006 by jumping over 20 slots (Before that, it wasn't even present in the Top 20 list).
Luxury Items Shown
- Director Farhan Akhtar and producer Ritesh Sidhwani and Shah Rukh Khan was present at the launch of their costumes which DON starrer SRK wore in the movie.
- The In-film advertising Shah Rukh Khan starrer, Don has become the brand ambassador for the prestigious watch brand, TAG Heuer. The actor will be promoting its latest watch, i.e. the TAG Heuer’s Monaco 69 in Don. So we will all be seeing the superstar flaunting this latest model.
The brand has also launched a limited edition Monaco 69 Shah Rukh Khan watch. This is the only watch that has the ability to display analog time on one side and digital on the other. Only 100 pieces of this master piece will be launched in the market, in October. SRK has given his inputs for the design on this model. All the pieces will bear his signature.
- This movie is full of luxury/exotic cars, especially recent Mercedes-Benz models.
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- Black Mercedes-Benz SL sitting in a car dealership
- Various Mercedes cars (and Ferrari/Lamborghini cars) in car dealership
- Bad guy drives to rendezvous point in C-class sedan
- The main character drives up in an E-class sedan
- The main character is involved in a car chase while in a silver Mercedes-Benz R171 SLK.
Box Office Reaction
- The movie grossed more than 50 crores in India and 32 crores in Overseas which is the 4th highest for a movie in 2006.
- Initially the critics panned the movie and tried to label it as a flop but the audiences mostly liked the movie and it went on to become one of the successes of the year 2006.
- In the UK, the film grossed GBP £537,000 (a little more than USD 1 million) in the opening five days along with the preview, which is the highest Diwali opening weekend ever for a Hindi film.
- In the US, the film grossed USD 1.2 million in the opening 5 days.
- In the period of just nine days, Don has grossed above 3.45 million Dirham in Gulf which is highest ever for a Hindi film.
- In Australia and South Africa, the week's collections were the highest ever for a Hindi film.[1]
- Don - The Chase Begins Again opened in at least 1,200 screens worldwide, beating the opening of Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna.[2]
Trivia
- This is the third time Shah Rukh Khan plays a dual role after Duplicate (1998) and Paheli (2005).
- Shah Rukh and Priyanka Chopra underwent special martial arts training for their roles in the movie.
- Isha Koppikar stars in a role which is given more footage and substance compared to the original film.
- Farhan Akhtar is planning on making a sequel subtitled as Don 2 - A voice From The Sky . Shah Rukh Khan, on this said, "if he didn't, I would".
- Shah Rukh Khan sang the few lines in the song "Khaike Paan Banaraswala".
- Kareena Kapoor dances to the song "Yeh Mera Dil" previously performed by cabaret queen Helen.
- Two of the original songs, "Khaike Paan Banaraswala" and "Yeh Mera Dil" were remade for the movie.
- Shah Rukh reprises several catchy lines from the original Amitabh movie, including,
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- "Don ka intezar to gyarah mulkon ki police kar rahi hain, lekin ek baat samajh lo, Don ko pakadna mushkil hi nahin, naamumkin hain." In English, it translates to "Don is wanted by the police forces of eleven nations, but know one thing, capturing Don is not difficult, it's impossible."[3]
- "Don ke dushmanon ki sabsi badi ghalti hai ke woh Don ke dushman hain." In English, this means, "The greatest mistake of Don's enemies is that they are his enemies."
- "Log Don ko nahi, duniya ko chodte hain". In English, this translates to, "People don't leave Don, they leave the world." (leave in this context means to die)
- The SLK in the movie is a left-hand drive car, made for the Asian market, with a Kompressor badge on the side. This indicates that it is an SLK200.
- A laser projection keyboard is seen being used in a scene performed by Arjun Rampal.
- Don has a Motorola RAZR V3 cell phone and DeSilva has a Motorola SLVR cell phone.
- Vijay is supposed to eat Paan from Banaras, however when talking to De Silva while talking about Don, he is seen eating Paan from Kolkata.
- The gun shown as Don's in the movie is a Beretta 98FS Limited Edition.
- The director Farhan Akhtar's father, Javed Akhtar, co-wrote the original film along with Salim Khan.
- The film was selected to be screened at the Berlin Film Festival under the “International Forum” section. The festival is scheduled to be held in the month of February 2007. [4]
- There are many scenes and mistakes that Don (acting as Vijay) makes which hint towards the twist at the end of the movie. First in the scene in which Vijay (Don) is on the phone you can tell, by looking at the television in the background, that Vijay has been watching 'Tom and Jerry', Don's favourite show. Secondly, when Vijay (Don) and Roma go to see Deepu at the school Vijay doesn't greet Deepu. Instead he looks around the room confused. It may seem at the time that he is just looking for Deepu but in reality he is waiting for Deepu to come to him because he has no idea what Deepu looks like since he (Don) has never met him. When Deepu questions his behaviour Vijay (Don) says that he 'didn't recognise him with his uniform on'.
- Akshay Kumar was offered for the role of Jasjit. But he rejected saying he might have accepted if he was offered the part of Don. [5]
Ratings
- Don Currently has a rating of 7.3 (1,311 votes) on IMDb.
- It was rated 4/5 (Very Good) by The Times of India.
- Yahoo! Movies has given it a rating of B from 676 votes.
- Flixster's users have given it an overall rating of 4.5 out of 5.
Hong Kong International Film Festival
- 2007 Nominated best actor Shah Rukh Khan in Don - The Chase Begins Again
Awards and Nominations
- Nominated for 'Best Film' at the 2007 Filmfare Awards .
- Shah Rukh Khan was nominated for the 'Best Actor' award at the 2007 Filmfare Awards for his portrayal of Don.
- Shah Rukh Khan was nominated for the 'Best Actor In A Negative Role' award at the 2007 Stardust Awards for his role as DON.
- Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy were nominated for the ' Best Music ' award at the 2007 Filmfare Awards.
- Sunidhi Chauhan was nominated for 'Best Singer' award for the song 'Yeh Mera Dil' at the 2007 Filmfare Awards.
External links
- Don - The Chase Begins Again official Website
- Don - The Chase Begins Again at the Internet Movie Database
- DON 2 - The Chase Continues' website
