All of those you loved, you mistrust. Help me, I'm just not quite myself.

Don
Chandra Barot 1978 India
Starring: Amitabh Bachchan, Pran, Iftekhar, Zeenat Aman, Om Shivpuri, Satyendra Kapoor

I've been watching a lot of Indian cinema in recent months and, as such, I've seen a huge amount of the biggest male star and arguably one of the best actors in Bollywood history, Amitabh Bachchan, someone whose mere presence can transcend even the flimsiest of plots and poorest of directors. The same goes for Pran, known throughout his mammoth 67 year, 371 film career as the most accomplished villain in the industry. 1978's Don unites the two, in the eighth of their twenty collaborations, and also takes in two of the most common themes of Bollywood - policemen and doubling. Often this doubling takes the form of brothers (usually on opposite sides) but here it's doppelgängers with Bachchan in a rare villainous role as merciless, permanently smoking gangster Don whose sudden death at the hands of the police (one of the best, and few, truly dramatic scenes in the film with Bachchan giving a masterclass in bloody defiance and managing to be at once subtle and ballsy) allows the chief inspector to clandestinely send a kind-hearted lookalike (Bachchan again) he's struck a deal with to infiltrate the band of criminals feigning amnesia to explain his lapses in knowledge. I'll admit it's an unlikely scenario but thanks to a mostly excellent script it's full of clever twists and complex characters from Zeenat Aman's Roma who, in an attempt to avenge her brother and sister-in-law, cuts her hair and learns the martial arts then infiltrates Don's gang with more success than the police to Pran's duplicitous safecracker turned tightrope walker Jasjit, forced to return to his previous career by a family tragedy then shot in the legs just to put paid to any hopes of a happy ending. It's these small moments of darkness in what's otherwise best viewed as pure entertainment that really make the film as good as it is and things are only helped by the fact that the fight scenes are treated with a pretty lightweight touch making them a fun spectacle rather than a realistic battle, full of flips, karate and almost comic sound effects (Pran in particular flies shockingly well for someone who walks with a cane). There's even a pleasing section of the credits listed as 'Thrills by...'. That really sums Don up, it has moments that thrill and entertain and others that work dramatically yet it never feels mismatched. There is one problem however as the film is very much of its time and in many ways hasn't aged terrifically well. Bollywood obviously agreed and remade the film, for once with justification, in 2006 but only made a balls-up of it. As fun as the original is it really wouldn't have worked in the first place with less talented actors and staff so a modern version was perhaps doomed to begin with. The ending's really anaemic too.