Don (2006)

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General		Extras
Category	Action	Trailer-Bollywood Masala trailers Music Video-Song Selection Menu Featurette-Making Of-Making of Don Outtakes-Bloopers Deleted Scenes-Deleted Scenes Trailer-Original theatrical trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	2006
Running Time	168:37 (Case: 162)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (82:51)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Farhan Akhtar
Studio Distributor	Madman Entertainment	Starring	Shahrukh Khan Priyanka Chopra Arjun Rampal Isha Koppikar Boman Irani Om Puri Pavan Malhotra Rajesh Khattar Tanay Chheda Kareena Kapoor Chunky Pandey Sushma Reddy Diwakar Pundir
Case	?
RPI	?	Music	Shankar Mahadevan Loy Mendonsa Ehsaan Noorani

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Unknown	Hindi Dolby Digital 5.1
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	?
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Don is the latest movie from Bollywood director Farhan Akhtar (Lakshya, Dil Chata Hai) and is essentially a modern-day gangster movie, Bollywood style. That means that it's going to have lots of violence, beautiful women, exotic locales and a reasonably preposterous storyline! And Don doesn't fail to disappoint on any of those scores.

    It stars the hottest actor in India today, Shah Rukh Khan as Don, the right hand man in a major Indian illicit drug gang operating primarily in Malaysia. Don (the man, not the film) is a ruthless and cold blooded criminal who'll stop at nothing to get what he wants. Early on he executes a gang member who threatened to leave the gang.

    The Indian Police are after him, especially Deputy Commissioner De Silva (played by Boman Irani), and so is the executed gang member's sister, Roma (played by Priyanka Chopra) who manages, rather easily, to become a part of the gang to get her revenge on Don.

    Don is eventually captured by the police who are also keen to bring down the rest of the gang hierarchy. De Silva comes up with a brilliant plan to recruit a street performer who just happens to look exactly like Don, and use him to infiltrate the gang. That's when the story really starts to get interesting...

    If you don't expect too much from it like a deep plot, or powerful acting, Don is a fun movie packed with excitement, plot twists and a good, modern big budget feel to it. It features 2 of Bollywood's biggest stars and not too many irrelevant song-and-dance numbers.

Video

    The video is presented in its original theatrical ratio of 2.35:1 and is 16x9 enhanced.

    The picture is sharp throughout, though perhaps not the sharpest I've seen.

    Shadow detail is reasonable, though there are scenes (such as at 0:59) in which the dark parts of the scene appear a bit washed out. However this might have been part of the original cinematography and not a fault of the DVD transfer.

    There is no visible low level noise.

    Colour is good throughout. The director has chosen to use various colour palettes to reflect the different locations in which the film is shot. For example a blueish tinge when in Europe. Indoor scenes tend to take on a blue-green tinge.

    There was some visible aliasing at various occasions. For example at 68:20, the vertically striped shirt almost seems to pulsate!  Aliasing also shows up during some of the exterior shots of the Petronas twin towers.

    The end titles (that somehow look a bit 'cheap') suffer quite badly from Gibb Effect, making them a little difficult to discern.

    The subtitles are in English and are accurate and well-timed. They are even provided for the occasional English dialogue.

    The layer change was unnoticeable on my equipment.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    This DVD provides a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack.

    Dialogue is clear at all times, with no audible distortion.

    There are no issues with audio sync.

    The music, by Shankar-Loy-Ehsaan (Bunty aur Babli, Kal Ho Na Ho), is in two flavours. One is the modern dance-floor oriented style for the film's thankfully relatively few song sequences, whilst the incidental music is a little reminiscent of latter-day Bond soundtracks. This suits the onscreen action well without overwhelming it, or being particularly memorable.

    Rear surround channels are primarily used for ambient noise as well as to carry the music, which is nicely mixed for the surround effects, with discrete instruments in the rear channels. Surprisingly though there are few discrete sound effects in the rears. I say 'surprisingly' because Bollywood action films of the last few years tend to utilise the rear channels very well for effects. Interestingly an Aussie firm (SoundFirm Australia) have been credited with the sound effects and sound mix.

    The subwoofer is well fed by its own 0.1 LFE channel. It's called upon throughout this film to support music and effects, even during the opening credits.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    This release is a dual-disc package, although I felt that the extras were not as plentiful as one would expect. In fact I think all of these could have quite easily fitted on a single-disc release.

    The menu is just a still image of Don, with some theme music playing in the background.

    Disk 1 extras are as follows:

    Trailers - Bollywood Masala trailers

        Asoka (runtime 1:53), presented in 2.35:1 format and 16x9 enhanced

        Mangal Pandey (1:09), presented in 2.35:1 letterboxed.

    Song Selection Menu

        Allows the user to play any of the 5 main songs in the film.

    Disk 2 extras are as follows:

    Featurette - Making of Don (runtime 52:34)

        This documentary is presented as a police interview of various cast and crew, including Shah Rukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Farhan Akhtar and Om Puri. The sound is poor in parts, especially during on-location interviews. Some footage is incorrectly formatted as 1.78:1.

    Bloopers (9:44)

        A collection of bloopers from the filming of Don. Some scenes have no audio.

    Deleted Scenes (10:21)

        Collection of scenes deleted from the final theatrical release. Subtitles are included.

    Clap Track (16:34)

        Rather boring and overlong sequence of clapperboards during the making of this film.

    Theatrical Trailer (2:32)

        The original trailer for Don, presented in 2.35:1 letterboxed with subtitles.

    This R4 release appears to be the best version available.

    This film is a remake of the original 1978 version starring Amitabh Bhachan.  Whilst I haven't seen the original one, I can say that this current version was more than a little reminiscent of some Hollywood films, especially some of the Bond franchise. For example the parachute sequence is almost lifted straight out of Moonraker!

    Despite the homage to other films, or perhaps because of them, I felt Don was quite an enjoyable action film with a little more of a story to it than many of its ilk from Hollywood and Bollywood. It has a reasonably strong storyline with plenty of twists, a great cast, and plenty of Bollywood-style over-the-top action, stunts and violence.

    As with many a Bollywood, and Hollywood film, the viewer does need to suspend disbelief as well as overlook some gaping plot holes at times. But overall its an enjoyable flick.

    The picture quality and sound mix were perhaps not the greatest, but were still pretty good. Despite being a dual-disk package, the extras were only moderately worthwhile in quality and quantity. A director's commentary would have been good, but I'm yet to see one of these appear on a Hindi DVD.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall