Retro Review of the Week: Don

Comments [ 2 ] By Gurprit K. | 18 November 2013 | 10:55pm

BollyCurry is back with a bang; presenting to its readers a movie that has gunshots banging throughout the entire film. A 1978 blockbuster, Don is a movie you're least likely to forget. As popular as it is, the movie has some interesting facts that shall be unraveled today.

The third highest grocer of 1978, Don is fondly called the Golden Jubilee Movie of the Indian cinema. The movie was directed by Chandra Barot and produced by Nariman A. Irani, under the Nariman Films production house. There star cast included the legend himself, Amitabh Bachchan, along with Zeenat Aman, Om Puri, Pran, Iftekhar, etc.

Don is the story of a very powerful criminal (Amitabh Bachchan), who despite being wanted by the police of 11 countries is obscure to them all. He has numerous enemies given the nature of his work, be it policemen, his rivals, and sometimes his own men. One such man, Ramesh, is killed by Don when he wants to quit. Ramesh's fiance (Helen) dies in the process of avenging his death. Then Roma (Zeenat Aman), Ramesh's sister jumps into this fire to avenge the death of her two dear ones. Things take a surprising turn when situations become tricky, and Don is replaced by his look-alike Vijay, an informant of the police. Things get complicated when the only officer who knew about Vijay's real identity dies. The happenings when Vijay is cornered by the police and his men, owing to the identity crisis, are what make the movie a must watch.

Coming to the accolades section, Amitabh Bachchan won the Filmfare Award for Best Actor, while Lata Mangeshkar and Kishore Kumar won the Best Playback Singers, female and male respectively.

Fun Facts:

A Hindi remake of the movie was made in 2006 starring Shah Rukh Khan and directed by Farhan Akhtar. It was one of the highest grosser films of that year. A sequel of the same was made in 2011.
Amitabh Bachchan dons a different hairstyle throughout the movie because of the 3 year time lag in the shooting of the movie.
The song "Khaike Paan Banaraswala" was actually written for Dev Anand's Banarasi Babu.
Only two singers lent their voice for all the songs in this movie - Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar.
A similar storyline was used in movies like Dav Pech (1989), Duplicate (1998) and Madam X.
Don had the following remakes - Yugandhar (1979) and Billa (2009) in Telugu; Billa (1980) and Billa (2007) in Tamil, Shobarai (1986) in Malayalam and The Death and Life of Bobby Z (2007) in English.