Shah Rukh Khan quit as my secretary. He was assigned the task of letting me know every time my phone rang. But today, I had to give it away in exchange of a new phone. And with it I lost Shah Rukh Khan. True, he has embarassed me by shouting at all the wrong moments — many times inside a movie hall, some times during a press conference and once during an Abhishek Bachchan interview. “Interesting,” Abhishek noted, trying to hide a smile.
Shah Rukh Khan has amused and entertained all those who knew me and my phone for the last few years.
Long sigh!
Adios, Shah Rukh!
(In case you didn’t know, Shah Rukh Khan’s stammering ‘Aiiii… Kkkkaun Hai..huhahahuh’ was my notorious ringtone.
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Company was Act 2 and Act 3.
D is Act 1 of the same story. So the question is: Why would anyone want to spend two hours of Act 1?
But having said that, D was almost Decent.
But it’s unfair to compare this prequel in spirit with the original Company.
Company was a classic, made by the master himself. It had an explosive star cast, excellent performances, rocking background score, a tight script and a riveting plot. And, it had a budget.
D’s made by a Debutant director, it had a semi-decent cast, half-baked characters, pale imitations for songs (except for ‘Ek Pal Ki Zindagi’… my friend sang it!) and hardly a budget.
The script itself was paralysed by the fact that there were no good men in the film. Thus the film without a conscience got sucked into the vortex of underworld and it’s monotonous machinery of crime. Without a Commissioner like Srinivasan (Mohanlal) in the original or even a Chandu (the don with a little conscience left in him), the only conflict in D is between an aging don’s emotionally charged power crazy sons and a coldly clinical power hungry Deshu (Hooda is a good, but not quite Devgan).
So if you view D in isolation, it is a weak film.
But if you watch it in the context of Company, it emerges as a pretty decent film which stayed faithful to the characters it is based on (both fictionally… to Malik and factually… to Dawood). It shows us how a constable’s son rises in almost the same situations and circumstances as Chandu later does. Deshu and Chandu’s journeys into crime are almost similar. The only differentiating trait being Chandu’s essentially human trait of caring for friends and a conscience that does not allow him to kill innocent children!
When you watch D and then Company, you feel the story coming a full circle with Chandu’s rise in the gang being very similar to Deshu’s. Which is when you see Ramu’s point of making D in the first place — to show what it took one man to make an empire. A clinically cold approach, a belief that went ‘Dost dushman hote hai’ (‘Friends are enemies’ ) and the hunger for power and profit. We don’t actually enjoy people chasing success on these terms. Which is why we don’t enjoy D, even if it’s a decent effort!!
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MADRAS INK. 