#264: Don 2

The legend of Farhan Akhtar was perhaps beginning to be too good to be true. Here is a man who could lay claim to being the modern day Gurudutt. Writer, Actor, Director and even a singer. If Luck by Chance was just chance, Rock On wasn't. And ZNMD surely wasn't. These were all films that Farhan was making a mark with just his acting and we all knew his first and foremost skills lie in being a a director. So how good was he going to be ? Better than Dil Chahta Hain ? With the slick first edition of the new Don he kept us guessing as to how good the second edition could potentially be. The key operative word there being 'potential'. Because nothing in Don 2 lives up to that potential and that is just to put it mildly.

Essentially a heist film, Don 2 is written by Farhan Akhtar and two enthusiastic fan writers as Farhan calls his team comprising Ameet Mehta and Amrish Shah. In an article on Wiki, Farhan expresses how this story is about 3 fans of Don moving the story forward and having fun doing so. Point is when you're watching the movie, there's no fun for the viewer. Meant to be a cutting-edge thriller, the film's fancy production values are not enough to keep you glued to the screens. It is also one of those movies where the different departments don't seem to have clicked in unison.

With a sloppy storyline and unimpressive performances, the Don 2 does little to capture let alone take your breath away. In hindsight, one couldn't help but feel that the trailer was so much better than the film. Where one felt sympathy for Roma (Priyanka Chopra) in the first edition, here one is stupefied to her fall in love with the same Don (Shahrukh Khan) who killed her brother not so long ago. And that was still pardonable but what flies right in your face are some glaring loopholes in a thriller film that should've been a watertight plot. While the second half is miles ahead of the first in terms of the action quotient, it still leaves a lot to be desired. The only convincing performances in the film come from Boman Irani and Shahrukh himself who seems to have put in a lot of effort towards his character. Alas, it still is not enough to save the film from being a disappointment.

Overall, Don 2 has few things going for itself. It is Farhan's weakest film as a director. There is an inherent lack of conviction that is as startling as pissing off about Don 2 and that makes this no more than a mediocre piece of cinema. And what a pity that is because there was one thing Don 2 had which very few sequels inherently do and that's 'potential'.

Rating: 4.6/10