Forget the schmaltzy musicals, thanks to maverick filmmaker Farhan Akhtar, Bollywood has fallen in love with the ultimate anti-hero. P.Ramakrishnan talks to the man behind action blockbuster Don 2.
"If your mother knew what you had done, she'd shoot you herself," says an exasperated inspector in an undisclosed Kuala Lumpur prison, confronting the master criminal.
"You didn't know my mother," grunts the tattoo-covered, muscle-bound Don, the hint of a wicked grin escaping his lips.
It took the penmanship and directorial moxie of screenwriter, director, actor, singer and lyricist Farhan Akhtar to turn actor Shahrukh Khan, 46, gleefully bad on celluloid. A return to form, "King" Khan (as he's known by the Mumbai media, for his unprecedented box-office success) plays the bad guy with relish once again in Don 2: The King is Back after years of whisking away leading ladies in song and dance.
"In the first film, we had played against prototype," Akhtar, 37, says of the 2006 movie Don: The Chase Begins Again. "We let the bad guy get away with it. He killed the hapless hero, he murders the leading lady's brother and the audience was in on it. They enjoyed the fact he got away with it in the last reel - and we didn't justify the 'badness' of the character. There was no psychological cause, tormented background nor redeeming factor about Don. He was just bad - and liked being bad."
The open-ended conclusion hinted at a sequel, but the filmmaker clarifies: "Honestly speaking, when we wrapped up the first film, we seriously didn't consider it. But psychosomatically, it came about. Everywhere we went, people kept coming up to me and asking when the sequel was coming out.
"While we worked on other projects, Ritesh [Sidhwani, the producer] and I kept thinking about it. So we sat down with two other writers and fleshed out a plot about two years ago. On a trip to Germany back in 2007, Berlin's untapped cinematic potential [made an impression] - it's a city meant for panoramic cinema. So we kept that in the background, too."
Given the success of its predecessor, expectations were high, so the trick, Akhtar says, was learning how to keep an audience interested.
"The viewer is already wise enough to know that there's a twist coming, so the hurdle we had to cross was to keep the audience second-guessing," he says. "It's the nature of the film and the genre; so we had to create enough sequences and surprises to keep the audience at the edge of its seat at multiple turns. The fan base already knows he's going to get away - but how? And then to make it plausible - well, cinematically plausible."
Sequels are often derided as pale imita- tions of the original, exceptions being The Godfather: Part II and one or two others.
"In India, we have the opposite; people look forward to sequels. There's a ready-made audience that already knows the characters [the main leads are back for Don 2], so each successive film gets a larger viewership - the curse of the sequel doesn't worry us."
Indeed, Akhtar sounds remarkably calm in the lead-up to the opening of his latest big-budget action caper, which comes in the wake of Khan's much maligned film Ra. One, which was released in October. Ra. One recovered its enormous cost - such is the popularity of Khan - but the media panned the bloated, special-effects-laden movie.
"I'm not at all worried in that aspect," says Akhtar. "We've been in the business for long enough to not let what 15 critics say affect us too much."
The son of legendary Indian poet and writer Javed Akhtar (who has an unprecedented 14 Filmfare awards - the Indian equivalent to the Oscar) and former actress and award-winning screenwriter Honey Irani, if not by genetic predisposition (his sister, Zoya, is also a writer and director), then by sheer osmosis the raspy-voiced son was to the writing-manner born. When asked about his hefty literary lineage, he says, laughing: "Thankfully, I live under no pressure from being born under the shadow of my parents' vast achievements.
"Fortunately, we [Farhan and Zoya] have been left to our own devices and have a huge support system. There's no pressure to meet their records. The benefits have been endless, we can talk about films for hours, as well as politics, art, literature. There was no expectation to follow anyone, to amass the trophies. They want us to do well - like any other parent."
With his first film, Dil Chahta Hai (2001), Akhtar established himself as a game-changer. A hit with the collegiate demographic, the Hindi production captured the zeitgeist of Indian youth who were cosmopolitan, wealthy and idle - his three protagonists spend a lot of time on the beaches of Goa. The rom-com has characters with devil-may-care attitudes who nevertheless find their bearings.
Akhtar then went beyond the boy-meets-girl Bollywood musical template. His second film, Lakshya, traces the life of an aimless student who makes his mark as a soldier. It may not have set the box office on fire, but, as most critics noted, Akhtar was the man to watch.
Then followed Don, a remake of a 1978 film.
"When I saw the original Don, which was written by my father and Salim Khan, I remember being a little scared of the character," says Akhtar. "[Amitabh Bachchan] was the bad guy, who was the lead and unapologetic about it. That stayed with me. So when the opportunity came to bring back the subject, it was an exciting option.
"In the Hindi film industry, we're used to pigeon-holing the leads: the all-around good-guy hero, the virginal heroine, the skimpily dressed vamp, the pipe-smoking villain. The boundaries are set. This was an awakening; you get to break the rules."
Akhtar based his reboot loosely on the original but brought it into the new century with a polished veneer, a remix of songs from the 1970s and a novel twist.
"When the first draft of the script came, we could only see Shahrukh Khan doing it," says Sidhwani, who has co-produced all of Akhtar's films. "We needed someone who had the charisma to ensure that the audience didn't repel from the fact that this guy kills people and keeps getting away with it."
Nearly two decades ago, Khan played the bad-guy role in a trio of Hindi films: Baazigar, in which his character kills one of the lead females; Darr, in which he plays a serial stalker; and Anjaam, which saw him play a sociopathic killer. But in the years since, Khan has played the saccharine, guitar-strumming protagonist in a slew of romantic films, wooing beauty queens and family audiences, and in the process becoming the highest-paid Hindi film actor to date.
"For someone who doesn't even like love stories, I've played an awful lot of lovers," Khan has said. "Personally speaking, I wouldn't see any of the romantic films I've acted in."
Which perhaps explains how eagerly he jumped at the opportunity to play Don, in his 58th and 75th film appearances.
"I did enjoy him as the bad guy," says Akhtar, as he heads to Dubai with his cast for the premiere of the film. "The capacity to play bad in a very, very interesting way takes an actor of Shahrukh's calibre, and he pulls it off with such panache.
"What I liked about Don was that we never justify his greed, the need for power. He doesn't claim to be anything but his bad self - the audience prefers that lack of hypocrisy. If we had turned the character good - given him a subplot to explain the way he is - then the film wouldn't have worked."
Akhtar grew up in Mumbai (Bombay as it was then) in the 80s, uniformly recognised as the worst decade for Hindi films; an excess of mindless musical mayhem that needed a transfusion of fresh blood.
"God, there were some awful movies made in the 80s, which gave birth to so many cliches," he says. "You really have to sift through to find the cinematic gems. But now, things have changed."
Nonetheless, he says, "I enjoyed Hindi films a lot growing up. I never looked down on them. And in equal measure, I was crazy about dramas and action films from Hollywood - the Bond movies and Die Hard. Especially Die Hard!
"Friends used to make fun of me, but I used to watch Bruce Willis' action - or parts of it - every day. Die Hard I, II, III and IV - I loved them all. Fast-paced action, non-stop movement and exposition, the lines - which, as a teen, I thought were brilliant. Now I flinch a bit. But I still love it and know every word."
And therein may lie the genesis of the slick and expensive action sequences in his own films. With an international crew and the latest technology, the sheen and patina of Don 2 is several notches above the average fare - and if the chase scenes seem reminiscent of The Bourne Identity it is for good reason.
"The Mumbai movie-watcher is different from those of anywhere else as we're fed on both Indian films and Hollywood flicks, so our generation of movie makers has that duality in them. We want to make films where the action is on par with an American counterpart, but we won't shy away from the song-and-dance routine," says Akhtar. "I have to say, I enjoy the music, too - as long as it pushes the story forward. The days of mindless, 'lets put a song here to give the audience time to go to the loo' are over. I hope."
Don 2 is less than two hours and 15 minutes long - shorter by three quarters of an hour than the average Hindi film - and most of the songs hum along in the background.
"We added a background score for Don, and there aren't many lip-synced dances that the leads break into. Depending on the nature of the film - its genre - the song-and-dance bit is often integral to Indian cinema, and it would be a disservice to take it out. The Frenchman in the hall or the German or the Malaysian or Indonesian, they expect it just as much as the Indian audience does.
"The rate of inflation aside, Don 2 is on a much larger scale [than the first Don]. We had established that Don was wanted all across Asia for the crimes he committed in the first film - so why not take over the world?" says Akhtar. "We had an excellent crew and cast [in Berlin] - and if you've heard the expression, 'India has the largest cinematic audience', well, we witnessed it. Everywhere we went, even in the winter, hundreds of people gathered to watch. Shahrukh celebrated his birthday during the shoot and hundreds of people congratulated him - he was very moved."
Don 2 was simultaneously released in India, the United States and Britain, where there is a large Indian community. Russia, France, Malaysia, South Korea, Germany, Hong Kong and the mainland also got to see the film last weekend, as the market for Indian films with subtitles or dubbed versions grows rapidly.
Says producer Sidhwani: "In India, we got lucky that Mission: Impossible [Ghost Protocol] was released a week before Don 2. But we're also lucky that an Indian audience is not divided by a Hollywood option. A nation of a billion, if given an option, would patronise their local industry."
And will there be a Don 3?
Akhtar laughs: "Ring me back after you watch the film. I'll answer then."
The stars of Don 2, Shahrukh Khan and Priyanka Chopra, will host the Zee Cine Awards at the Venetian Macao on January 21. Tickets are available at www.venetianmacao.com/zee_cine_awards. Don 2 had a limited run over Christmas and may return in the new year. In the meantime you can visit www.don2thefilm.com to conduct your own investigation into his crimes.
Feature by P.Ramakrishnan, ramakrishnanp@hotmail.com
