Don-ning a new look

Finally ! I saw a movie at a theatre after being more than 3 months in the US. I had to miss "Lage Raho..." screened at the university theatre due to exams. This time I didn't want to miss, any hindi movie that would release at the theatre. This is how I got to go to "Don - The Chase Begins again" in spite of having read and heard bad reviews. I went with little expectations.

The movie began with a Bond like entry of Don. The titles are the best I have seen till date in Indian cinema. In fact I would rate the title sequence in the top few I have seen, others in the list being those of Catch me if you can, Spiderman and Matrix.

The all green, line-frame graphics of roads, tunnels, bridges...and the final part where the Kuala Lumpur towers in green frames blend to actual video, neat! You have got to see them, to appreciate the effort.

The casting of the movie is a very well thought of endeavour, with the exception of Kareena as Helen, she feels like a fish out of water. SRK, though I haven't really liked majority of his work, carries the burden of all-complex character pretty well. I don't know, from where Farhan Akhtar dug up Pawan Malhotra from, he was missing from big screen since ages. He does a very fine, calculated Narang. Other characters also fall in place with their characters.

The cinematography is world class, most sequences are grey and green filtered, like those in Matrix movies. The stunts are impressive, but putting them over the edge would have helped the movie a lot. The car chase where Don is supposed to die, is great, and you see the director's action shoes. He does those multi-angle shots, like those in The Hulk, and breath-taking car stunts like those you might have seen in Vin Diesel's TripleX.

Music-wise Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy trio make a mark. They put their own techno flavour in the old songs. The orchestrated theme music is grand, again for the first time I have heard such orchestration for theme music in Indian cinema. The title song, Main hoon Don has its own grandeur; the style, the velvet, the groove.

Its a tremendous effort and that shows. The movie is already a top grosser over Lage Raho, and some hollywood studio is remaking it. Farhan Akhtar does a hat trick.