| Don - The Chase Begins Again | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Farhan Akhtar |
| Produced by | Farhan Akhtar Ritesh Sidhwani |
| Screenplay by | Farhan Akhtar Javed Akhtar |
| Story by | Farhan Akhtar Javed Akhtar Salim Khan |
| Starring | Shahrukh Khan Priyanka Chopra Arjun Rampal Isha Koppikar Boman Irani |
| Music by | Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy Midival Punditz DJ Randolf |
| Cinematography | Mohanan |
| Editing by | Neil Sadwelkar Anand Subaya |
| Studio | Excel Entertainment |
| Distributed by | Excel Entertainment |
| Release date(s) | October 20, 2006 |
| Running time | 178 minutes |
| Country | India |
| Language | Hindi |
| Budget | 35 crore (US$6.65 million)[1] |
| Box office | 105 crore (US$19.95 million)[2] |
Don: The Chase Begins Again is a 2006 Indian action film directed by Farhan Akhtar. It is a remake of the 1978 film Don. The film is produced by Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani under their home banner Excel Entertainment. The film stars Shahrukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Arjun Rampal, Ishaa Koppikar, Boman Irani and Kareena Kapoor in a guest appearance. The film was selected to be screened at the Berlin Film Festival.[3] and was released in India and internationally on 20 October 2006. The film was the fifth highest grossing film of 2006 in India, grossing over 104 crores worldwide.
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In 2006, the drug trade is booming. The Malaysian Intelligence and Anti-Narcotic Department are called upon for assistance by their Indian counterparts. The Indian team is headed by DCP D'Silva (Boman Irani), who wants to break the drug operations of a drug lord named Singhania. Helping him along the way is Malik (Om Puri). He believes that capturing Singania's most dangerous and elusive lieutenant, Don (Shahrukh Khan), will be the most effective way of accomplishing this. Don's gang consists of Anita (Ishaa Koppikar), his girlfriend, and Narang (Pawan Malhotra). 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 in a special appearance).
During a police chase, Don is fatally injured and captured by D'Silva. D'Silva keeps it a secret that he has captured Don and proceeds to track down a Don look-alike, a singer named Vijay (also played by Shahrukh 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 (Tanay Chheda), gets a proper education. Meanwhile, Deepu's real father Jasjit (Arjun Rampal), who has just been released from prison, sets out in search for his son and to get his revenge on DCP D'Silva, who had arrested him and prevented him from rescuing his wife and child from blackmailers.
D'Silva trains Vijay and admits him to the same hospital Don is in, supposedly in a coma. He surgically gives Vijay all the scars and birthmarks the real Don has on his body. Don suddenly dies of heart failure in front of D'Silva and the doctors. While Vijay infiltrates Don's gang, D'Silva is killed in a fire blast. Vijay is forced to run from the police, and pursues a disc that is the last piece of evidence of Don's criminal activities, a disc which can get Vijay out of this mess and prove to the police that he is Don's lookalike, not Don himself.
Vijay convinces Roma that he is not Don and the two fall in love. Through various plot twists, Vijay recovers the disc. Eventually, it surfaces that D'Silva is alive and had staged his death. He is actually Vardhan, a notorious underground criminal with a grudge against Singhania, who he eventually ends up killing. Vijay then 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. He had killed and replaced Vijay while in the hospital and took his place; it was actually Vijay who had died of heart failure in front of Vardhan (DCP D'Silva), not Don. He had also been acting out his "love" for Roma as Vijay, which Roma realizes too late. In the end, Don escapes with Anita, bewildering both police and Roma.[4]
Eighty percent of the movie was shot in Malaysia, and was filmed around the tropical Langkawi island as well as the Petronas Twin Towers and the Jalan Masjid India area, which is the "little India" of Kuala Lumpur. Akshay Kumar was offered the role of Jasjit but he rejected it saying he might have accepted if he had been offered the part of Don.[5] Shahrukh Khan and Priyanka Chopra underwent special martial arts training for their roles in the movie.
The music was released on 26 August 2006 by T-Series, at the Inorbit Mall, Malad, Mumbai. Over 30000 people attended the function.[6] The film has seven songs composed by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy. Two of the original songs, "Khaike Paan Banaraswala" and "Yeh Mera Dil" were remade for the movie. The song "Aaj Ki Raat" was used in the 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire and is included in the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack.
Don: The Chase Begins Again was released worldwide on 20 October 2006. It became the fifth highest grossing film of 2006 in India, with revenues of 51 crores domestically. Box Office India declared it a hit.[7] It also grossed $7 million in overseas territories and was declared a "blockbuster".[8] The film grossed a total of 104 crores worldwide.[9]
Reviews were generally positive. However, the film was extensively compared to the original film starring Amitabh Bachchan. Mumbai Mirror's Mayank Shekhar gave it a rating of 4 out of 5. He did criticize the treatment of certain scenes in comparison to the original, though.[10] The Times of India's Nikhat Kazmi gave it a rating of 3.5 out of 5. However, she did not like a few casting choices.[11] Khalid Mohammed of the Daily News and Analysis rated it 2 on a scale of 5.[12] Bollywood Hungama's Taran Adarsh gave it 3 out of 5.[13] Variety stated that the film "could have been much better."[4]
The film was nominated for the following awards:
A sequel to the film, titled Don 2: The King is Back was released on December 23, 2011. Shahrukh Khan and Priyanka Chopra reprised their roles as Don and Roma in the sequel. It also features Boman Irani and Om Puri from the original, with Lara Dutta and Kunal Kapoor as new characters.
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