1978, India. Starring Amitabh Bachchan, Zeenat Aman, Pran, Iftekhar, Om Shivpuri, Satyen Kappu, P. Jairaj, Kamal Kapoor, Arpana Choudhary, Helen, M.B. Shetty, Mac Mohan, Azad, Yashraj, Devaraj. Directed by Chandra Barot. Buy now from India Weekly.

Sit back, brothers and sisters, and I'll tell you the story of a man who once held the vast population of India in the palm of his hand; a man larger than all others in heart and influence if not in stature, and to whom others could look for inspiration, for strength in times of need. Who is this man? No, not Mahatma Gandhi. No, not even Bose Chandras, the daring Indian dissident general who was the real reason the British finally freed the country. No, these men may have been great historical figures, they may have been great men, but when's the last time you saw Gandhi jump backwards out of a tree to kick some guy in the face while wearing powder blue flares?

No, brothers and sisters, the man to whom I refer is none other than Amitabh Bachchan, the biggest box office draw in Indian cinema throughout the 1970s and the crown prince of Bollywood cinema.

Perhaps you are unfamiliar with Amitabh Bachchan and his seminal works from the era. It would be understandable. After all, only hundreds upon hundreds of millions of people celebrated his name at the height of his popularity. Granted, the numbers for recognition were definitely in his favor, but in the United States at least, few people started their morning by waking up, cursing out President Carter about the gasoline rationing, then thinking to themselves, "I wonder who's big in Indian movies these days." It was our loss. The 1970s were the golden age of bad-ass action heroes, an era that will, unfortunately, probably never roll around again in today's climate of ultra-young pretty boy stars and high-tech, high-cost, low-quality computer effects. Gone are the days of grizzled, chain-smoking transit cops sitting at a control desk and barking into a radio at some terrorist. Gone are the days of guys like Joe Don Baker, Lee Marvin, Walter Matthau, and Clint Eastwood. It's been washed away by the cult of youth, by the lack of interest in making movies about and/or for adults, or at least for people who don't buy nine-year-old Ben Affleck as a world-weary ex-FBI agent.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, the 1970s may have had some bad music and some truly foul fashion trends, but it was a classic era for the action film. Standing amid the heroes, proud, dark, and lean, was Amitabh Bachchan, relatively unknown in the US but never the less Bollywood's mega-popular answer to Bruce Lee, Clint Eastwood, and whoever was considered at the time to be the Lee Marvin of Bavaria. I think it might have just been Lee Marvin, though it could also have been Helmut Kohl or some guy named Hans.

When it comes to Bollywood films, I already know what you're probably thinking, and for the most part you would be dead on. Indian films are almost always filled with delirious amounts of singing and dancing, even if they are horror films or those jingoistic, Pakastani-hating right-wing deals where Indian soldiers run in slow motion a lot while defending mother India and liberating grateful Kashmiri youth from the clutches of hand-wringing, bloodthirsty Pakastani terrorists. Hey, just because it's one of the most volatile and potentially catastrophic stand-offs in the history of civilization, with potentially millions of people at risk from nuclear attack, doesn't mean that Sonny Deol Sonny Deol or some other brave and noble Indian hero (actually, not some other now that I think about it. It always seems to be Sonny Deol) can't pop off for a lavish five-minute-long song and dance number with flashing lights, blue smoke, and a rump-shaking Bollywood beauty.


Yep, for those outside the culture (and even for quite a few within), the song-and-dance formula films so popular and plentiful in India can be a real chore to get through. We in the West lap up the once-a-year foray some Indian director takes into arthouse cinema with no musical numbers and maybe even some flashes of nudity, but looking at the foreign film section in the average American video outlet would delude you into thinking the only films ever made in India were Bandit Queen, Monsoon Wedding, and the collected works of Satyajit Ray. Admirable films and filmmakers all, but it's just not right to reduce the film capitol of the world (more films produced per year than the United States, or any other country for that matter) down to a few serious arty titles. That's like thinking the only filmmaker in Japan is Akira Kurosawa or that all American art films have the same emotional subtlety and low-key approach of arthouse filmmakers like Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer.

You just don't get a proper feel for a film industry, or for a people, if all you watch are the serious art circuit films. If that was the case, then everyone in America would be upper-middle-class gay or lesbian yuppies struggling to come to terms with their homosexuality amid a backdrop of quaint New York City cafes and coffee shops. There is very little in our arthouse fare to clue you into the fact that most Americans are beer-swillin' yahoos who can be entertained for months on end by shouting "What?" after every sentence uttered by Stone Cold Steve Austin. So I implore you, especially those of you in other countries, please do not judge us based on our neurotic arthouse cinema. Please show objectiveness and thoroughness by instead judging us based on the number of pork rinds we can cram into our mouth at one time and the fact that we still, for some ungodly reason, cheer for Hulk Hogan.

Understanding of a culture can come in part through their popular entertainment, no matter how bizarre and bad that entertainment may be. The intellectuals of any given country will bemoan the fact that they would be judged by popular entertainment, but let's face it: the reason it's called popular entertainment is because that's what most of the population enjoys. I'm not proud of the fact that I live in a nation that laughed its ass off during Saving Silverman, but what can I do? The fact of the matter is that most Americans are prone to liking crap like that, and so judging us as a people is sadly more accurately done based on pop cinema than on anything I like. Likewise, I'm sure the intelligencia of any country doesn't want you to think their nation is full of idiots who tune in to Razzmatazz or that show where Beat Takeshi wears a lobster suit and shoots naked men out of a bungee cord cannon, but that's what the folks like, and that's who makes up your country. Only by exploring what people actually like, as opposed to what snotty film critics and lit professors tell us people like, can we begin to uncover cultural truths like, "All peoples are pretty goofy."

Based, then, on my research regarding their pop culture, I am now more in tune with the fact that in India, everyone sings and dance and magically transports between discos, mountain meadows, fields of flowers, and neon-lit back alleys in the space of a few seconds. Everyone in India is just half a breath away from belting out a song and having the whole street bust out some well-choreographed dance moves. So says popular cinema, so it must be true. Likewise, all Americans are crudely rendered computer graphics accompanied by a blaring rap-metal soundtrack everywhere they go and all British people are forty-year-old flamboyant gay men working at the Grace Brothers department stores and rolling their eyes every time that Mrs. Slocum makes some comment like "my pussy was soaking wet last night," meaning of course that she left her cat outside in the rain.

Whether or not he was well-known in the United States, no ongoing commentary about the action films of the 1970s (or of any decade, for that matter) would be complete without spotlighting Amitabh Bachchan right there with the rest of the greats. Spotlighting Bachchan is cool with me, because the man was pretty boss. He was born the son of a captain of industry turned nationally-known poet and a woman whose only occupation seems to have been "socialite," which I guess is better than your only occupation being sociopath. While it would be cool and romantic to paint Bachchan as some impoverished young man who struggled up from the Calcutta ghettos to become the king of Indian cinema, the fact is that he was born into a pretty posh lifestyle in the town of Allahabad. When he became interested in acting, few people saw him as anything more than a rich college boy out on a lark.

That all changed once folks started getting a load of his on-screen charisma, booming voice, and innate talent at the craft. Within a few movies' time, Bachchan was well on his way to becoming the biggest star in the history of Indian cinema. During the 1970s, he was the posterboy for the Indian action film, though he didn't limit himself to that genre any more than the average action film limited itself to the action genre - Indian films manage to pack pretty much every genre into the single average film. Taking cues from spaghetti westerns, black action films, martial arts movies, and the various cop and gangster films, Bachchan was at the forefront of what became known as the masala film, spicy blends of violence, action, melodrama, sex appeal, and cool. Bachchan became best known as the originator of the "angry young man" character, often torn between the laws of kinship and the laws of the state, frequently falling on the wrong side of the laws of the state.


It wasn't long before Bachchan's characters struck a chord with the people of India, who like everyone else in the 1970s, weren't having a very good time. With the social strife and global turmoil. Bachchan's films presented them with wily underdogs and allusions to working class problems and unrest, even if he himself was nowhere near working class. Zanjeer was the film that rocketed him to the top, and there was no stopping him once he was there. When he suffered a grave injury on the set of a film called Coolie, the nation sat in anxious anticipation as they listened to frequently broadcast updates on the actor's medical condition. Eventually, Bachchan decided to parlay his celebrity into a political career, winning an elected office in 1984. In a unique approach to campaigning, part of Bachchan's publicity for his bid included the release of his film Inquilab, the finale of which features Bachchan's character laying waste to a room full of corrupt politicians.

He wasn't long for this political coil, though, thanks primarily to a little scandal involving his ties to organized crime. It was no big surprise that Amitabh would have connections to the underworld. Much like the Hong Kong film industry throughout the 1980s and first half of the 1990s, the Indian film industry of the time was more or less run entirely by organized crime, which is slightly different than in the US where film studios are often run by criminals, just not the organized variety. If you were making a movie at the time, then you were rubbing shoulders with gangsters and other unsavory characters. Still, it was enough to force Bachchan's eventual resignation from politics, which in turn signaled the beginning of his stardom's decline. Bachchan's popularity faded as the 1980s progressed, and although he briefly revitalized his career from time to time with a hit movie, it wasn't the same.

In the 1990s, Bachchan mounted another comeback attempt, which failed pretty miserably when each movie he made became one more in a string of bombs. India still loved the guy; they just didn't want to watch the crappy movies in which he starred. He countered by starting a corporation for managing and distributing talent and pop entertainment (and produced film like the controversial though lauded in the West Bandit Queen), but thanks to the low return on his movies, that didn't really pan out either. Just as it was looking like it was Amitabh's time to ride off into the sunset, he starred as a determined bank robber in the slick, formula-breaking heist film Aankhen, which many people said showcases the best performance of his career. Having not seen the film as of the writing of this review, all I can say is that in his older age, Bachchan is looking more and more like Al Pacino.

As for his many films from the 1970s, many people regard Don as his best. Of course, many people regard Deewar or Zanjeer as his best, and still many others will tell you its Sholay. The thing about India is that there are so many people that you have enough people around to provide "many people" opinions for quite a few films. Whether or not it's Bachchan's best film is debatable since he made so many good ones, but Don is certainly one of the finest action films from the 1970s despite the Bollywood song and dance trappings. It's action-packed, fast-paced (a rarity for a Indian film, even an Indian action film), well-written, compelling, and full of low-budget charm and heart. It's a great example of everything that was right with action films at the time, and everything that's since been abandoned in favor of bigger, louder, faker looking CGI explosions. Don is the kind of movie where someone will ask, "Who are you?" or "Who do you think you are?" just so Amitabh Bachchan can cast a steely glare at them and announce in his booming voice, "Don," which is invariably punctuated by a blast of dramatic music and a fast zoom in tight on his face., possibly followed up by an equally fast and tight zoom in on the face of his antagonist displaying one of those looks of combined awe and dread.

If you're interested in my opinion -- and for some mad reason you must be if you've bothered to read this far -- the dramatic fast-zoom just isn't used enough these days. Back in the 1970s, especially in low-budget action films, it was all you could do to keep the cameraman from doing the dramatic fast-zoom as often as possible. Heck, a kungfu villain couldn't walk five steps without someone zooming in on his dour face and hitting the loud blast of dramatic music. And as much as I like the technique, the world just didn't need that many close-ups of Wang Lung-wei. I'm sure if some directors had their way, the fast-zoom and dramatic music would follow every single line in a film, even plain vanilla ones like, "Would you care for an appetizer?" or "Who's the number one radio station in the tri-state area?"

I'm not saying every single little line of dialogue has to be punched up with this technique. Maybe just half of them. I'd be pretty happy then, though to be honest, I'd rather look at close-ups of Wang Lung-wei than ever see a giant stadium-seating theater projection of Martin Lawrence zooming at me.

Don opens with a classic action film sequence in which a group of gangsters are standing in a swaying, sunlit field as another gangster speeds toward them. When he gets out of his cars, the other guys say, "Don" soothe camera can zoom in fast on him and his Amber Vision sunglasses. Does Don have the money? Of course he does, but rather than making the exchange as planned, the other goons pull their guns on Don since no transaction in the entire history of the underworld has gone off without some hitch or one party attempting to double-cross the other. Don is no sucker, though, and he's watched enough action films to know there was a double-cross afoot. He sneers as he tosses the briefcase full of money over to the criminals. They scatter into very small pieces as they discover that rather than money, the briefcase contains a bomb.

That's Don, baby. He blows up people before the credits even roll!

When the credits do roll, they're rotoscoped fluorescent green and red scenes of mayhem and ass-kicking from elsewhere in the film, not unlike the cool credit sequence from Foxy Brown. And that theme song! Forget all that Bollywood pop nonsense! Don has one of the flat-out funkiest, hardest action theme songs of the 1970s. Don doesn't even have to kick your ass with his own foot. He can just throw on his theme song and let it kick your ass for him. If you bought the Bombay the Hard Way: Guns, Cars, and Sitars CD (which you should do if you haven't already), then you're already familiar with the theme from Don, as well as a few other tracks and dialogue samples that show up in original or remixed format on that disc. Ever wonder who's deep, rich baritone voice that was brushing off some unseen hot Hindi lass with the simple utterance of, "Some other time, baby." That was...Don!

Bachchan's character of Don, or The Don as he is often called (like how you can call Dwayne Johnson "The Rock" or "Rock"), is, unsurprisingly, one of the most notorious crime bosses in the entire world, but especially in India. That's why they zoom in on him every time his name is uttered. Tubby Interpol agent Malik comes to town to help the local DSP catch the wily criminal. Meanwhile (there are a lot of meanwhiles in this film), Don has to worry about the widow of one of his men, who Don himself killed when it was discovered that the guy - who is a dead ringer for Lars Ulrich - wanted to leave the criminal underworld and start a new life. The film's first musical number comes when she tries to delay Don's departure from a hotel room with her sensual pelvic thrusting and wild gyrations. I think just about every Hindi movie I've seen features a scene in which a woman tries to distract or delay someone by staging a song and dance number, but the context of this sequence actually sets it apart from a lot of other Indian films.

By that, I mean it looks like it could actually belong in the same movie as the rest of the action. When Indian films indulge in their musical sidebars, a lot of them tend to handle it like a music video that just gets plopped down in the middle of a movie. It often has nothing at all to do with the movie itself, and frequently they'll feature outlandish montages and location changes. One minute, a group of soldiers will be hunkered down in a snowy bunker high up in the mountains, facing a line of Pakistani machine guns, and one of the Indians will say, "This is intense. I am glad we have leave tonight." Then they'll just cut to five minutes of disco dancing, wild costumes, and MTV lighting as everyone sings and dances and gets filmed wandering through The Swiss Alps, Paris, the Taj Mahal, and some nightclub full of bubbles ands smoke. Then the next scene will just cut back the soldiers in the bunker again going, "Boy, leave sure was fun!"

Don at least attempts to ground the music in the events of the film. When the woman tries to seduce Don, the whole number takes place in the hotel room with no jumping all of a sudden to Milan or Jupiter. Within the context of the film, then, it's actually somewhat believable that this is going on without any wild leaps of logic. It makes the musical numbers a lot easier to swallow than some disconnected and wildly out-of-place production.

Don escapes, of course, because he's Don, but just as he takes care of one vengeful woman, Lars' sister shows up for revenge. Unlike Lars' fiancee, his sister Roma comes packing more than hip-shaking and false eyelashes. She's packing fists and feet full of kungfu rage and enough smarts to infiltrate Don's gang and become his number one gun moll. Roma is played by Zeenat Aman, and she's a good example of why Bollywood films are so well-known for their incredible beauties. She's a bombshell, to be sure. Enough to drop your jaw if she doesn't just sock you in it for starting at her. But her character here is also a rarity in Indian films, at least nowadays. She's an ass-kicker on the same level as and often above her male counterparts. She's smart, resourceful, and never once needs a man to come to her rescue. There's a definite dash of Pam Grier and Angela Mao in her. Women in most Indian action films (and most action films in general, regardless of country of origin) are little more than window dressing whose sole purpose is to act all coquettish in musical numbers with the hero. There's nothing at all impressive about them beyond their looks and dance moves. Zeenat Aman's Roma, however, is a real character. She's got depth, range, and the ability to go toe-to-toe with anyone who crosses her path. All that and she can still perform a jig or two when the music calls for it. Her role here was enough to rocket up near the top of our "greatest female ass-kickers" list.

With all these folks gunning for Don, it's only a matter of time before his many fights and car chases end up with him on the bad end of business. One night he narrowly escapes capture but gets fatally wounded in the process, dying in the backseat of the DSP's car he'd just hijacked. The DSP knows that someone else even bigger than Don is calling the international shots, and he devises one of those "only in a movie" plans to smoke out the big boss. Turns out that years earlier, the DSP handled a case in which a young street performer named Vijay reported a case in which the parents of two children had simply disappeared. The case itself was nothing spectacular, but Vijay was a dead ringer for...Don!

Okay, okay, that's a pretty big coincidence, but you're going to have to get used to things like that in this movie, because there's a lot of them. In a lesser film, they come across as clumsy contrivances thrown in simply because the writers couldn't think of anything else. In Don, on the other hand, they are used with great effect to keep the plot twisting and turning. Even though some of them are pretty outlandish (like the DSP happening to meet the one guy who happens to be Don's spitting image amid the hundreds of millions of people in India), the coincidences are woven so well into the fast-moving plot that they're easy to swallow. They're fun rather than being something that just makes you groan.

Vijay isn't wild about risking his life posing as the Don. He's happy chewing on betel leaves (the Indian equivalent of chewing tobacco) and caring for the two children he's raised as his own. When the DSP promises to pull strings to get them admitted for free into a prestigious school, Vijay is swayed. Against his better judgment, he will become.Don! His identity is known only to the DSP, who records the entire plan in a secret file he keeps hidden in his personal safe. That way, even if something happens to the DSP, there will be proof of Vijay's true identity. I guess they don't have his or The Don's fingerprints on record.

After staging an arrest, Don's gang - lead by Roma - rescue their boss from the hospital, unaware of the charade that is being performed at their expense. It was nice to see a gang that was completely loyal to their leader and genuinely excited to help him recover. Action films before and after have drilled into our heads the notion that at least one member of the gang has to be looking to stab everyone in the back, but here they are all loyal men. Well, except for Roma. She just wants to kill The Don and leave, but she can't kill him until he recovers his memory, which Vijay is faking having lost until he can learn everyone's names and faces. It's all a pretty clever ruse until the day he knows enough to announce that he has made a full recovery. From that moment on, Roma starts looking for ways to kill the poor guy, at least until she discovers the secret of his identity.

Meanwhile...

There's this weird looking guy named JJ who is about to get out of prison. He has one of the most disturbing haircuts I've ever seen, even worse than Sammo Hung's bowl cut from the 1980s, but not worse than Sammo Hung's jeury curl from the same era. JJ was one of the best safe-crackers in all of India, but he left it all behind when he got a family, becoming a circus performer and renouncing his life of crime despite frequent offers from members of Don's gang to get back in the business. When his wife falls gravely ill, however, JJ is forced into doing the proverbial "one last job" in order to pay for the operation that will save her life. As anyone who watches enough action films knows, there are certain guidelines you should stick to if you want to make it out alive. For example, if you're a cop never ever mention retirement, your family, or that boat you just bought so you and your wife can finally take that romantic cruise you've been planning for so long. That's just asking for a bullet in the head. Conversely, if you're a criminal you should never, under any circumstances, take "one last job" no matter what the motivation for doing so may be. It's not going to work out. It's going to be a trap, or the people who hired you are going to try and double cross you. I mean, poor Chow Yun-fat's done about a dozen "one last job" movies, and they never work out for him.

Sure enough, the DSP busts JJ, even putting a bullet in his leg as the poor guy sprinted through the hospital in a mad dash to deliver cash to the doctors to save his wife. JJ gets a prison sentence, his wife dies, and his children are abandoned to fend for themselves. You sort of get the feeling that the DSP, despite being a good guy, is sort of an asshole. I mean, he lets the guy's wife die right there in front of him, then he leaves the kids on the streets to die, and later on, he holds saving Vijay's adopted children (I wonder who their father will turn out to be) over Vijay's head in order to pressure him into taking part in this daft plan to masquerade as The Don. Not exactly the conduct of a decent guy.

Needless to say, JJ has lost everything that meant anything to him in his entire life. All he has left is his burning desire to get revenge against the DSP, and you can't really blame the guy. When Vijay discovers a book with all the names and contacts of The Don, he turns it over to the DSP, who in turn plans a big raid on the night of a meeting between all the heads of the top crime families in India. Don opens the meeting with a rousing "I'm the Don!" song, which may seem to be a silly thing for a gangster to do until you remember how much all those Italian gangsters like Sinatra and the Three Tenors. Everything goes pretty well with the raid up until the point where the DSP gets killed. Vijay is rounded up with the rest of the criminals, and none of the cops believe he's not Don. The criminals do, though, and they're just waiting for a chance to get their hands on him. When Inspector Malik goes to the DSP's home to retrieve the diary Vijay claims will prove his innocence, the safe has been cracked. Turns out JJ came looking for revenge, but found the safe and the diary instead and figured he could use it to blackmail Don's gang, who he also has a beef with. Will JJ succeed? Will Vijay escape the police and Don's vengeful thugs?

It's enough to make your head spin, but when you remember that, like all Indian films, this thing is close to three hours long, then you'll see that they need a lot going on to keep things movie. Most Indian films drag as a result of their running time and need to pad out the script, but Don has so much going on that it never misses a beat and always remains fast-paced and thrilling. Helping matters out is the fact that Amitabh Bachchan makes Vijay such a likable character. He does a spectacular job making audiences sympathize with Vijay, and as his situation becomes more and more desperate, the fact that we actually give a damn about him and Roma makes the film that much more exciting. It being an action film from the 1970s, you can never be sure just how things will turn out. True, Indian films almost always end with a "happily ever after," but masala films from the 1970s were different, and the possibility that Vijay won't make it out alive lends a sense of urgency to the proceedings.

One twist after another keeps the moving sprinting along, and special credit should be given to scriptwriter Salim Javed. He's crafted a long but taught, edge-of-the-seat action film with great characters and multiple sub-plots that are all tied into the main story by the end of the film. Writer-directors like Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie get a lot of credit for how they take so many seemingly unconnected strands of story and weave them all together, and while I don't want to take anything away from those guys (even though I can't stand Tarantino, I have to give the devil his do and admit that he can spin a well-structured yarn) Don does it just as well, perhaps even better, fifteen years earlier. It's really a work of art and a bit of a miracle that Javed pulls it all together and keeps the whole thing in order. Although there are no major revelations, there are a lot of surprising and pleasing twists. The best thing you can say about a three-hour-long film is that you don't even notice it was three hours. Such is the case with...Don!

Besides the great characters and complex if somewhat contrived plot, the frequent action sequences help propel the movie along at a rocket's pace. There are a few car chases, some shoot-outs, and a whole heck of a lot of kungfu fighting. None of it is very good, but it's fast-paced and exciting, which makes up for the rather sloppy editing and choreography during the fights. If you've watched a lot of films involving martial arts, then you've certainly seen worse crimes committed in the name of putting foot to ass than you'll see in Don. It's no worse than most pre-Bruce Lee kungfu fights, and it's as good or better than most Jimmy Wang Yu style "swingy arm" kungfu films, where all the combatants do is wave their arms wildly in each others general direction. The fight choreography in Don at least has enough sense not to be slow-paced or dull. It might not be pretty, but it is pretty cool. The final fight pits Vijay, JJ, and Roma against a seemingly endless stream of thugs, and it's full of cool action. JJ even gets to bust out some gymkata in one part! And Zeenat Aman impresses me as a fighter as well. Although there are some shots where she's being doubled, there are many more where she isn't, and she handles the stuntwork superbly.

One of the things I've always appreciated about Indian films is their message that even out-of-shape chumps can kick ass. Sure Zeenat and Amitabh are in top shape and look great, but there are fewer things more bizarre looking in film than JJ. Not only does he have that screwed-up haircut, he also wears a frilly black silk Renaissance festival shirt and has spindly little old man legs. Despite his appearance, he flies through the air and dishes out two-fisted beat-downs like there's no tomorrow. I think there's only one really muscular looking guy in the whole film, and Roma kicks his ass in about five seconds using some judo power. Everyone else looks like real people. Skinny people, fat people, people who are just shaped weird. It's a bit funny to see a guy like JJ doing so much fighting, but it's also refreshing and cool.

And what's with the henchman with a beard? Is he some sort of feral Wolfman?


The acting is great. Like Is aid before, Zeenat Aman is wonderful as Roma, giving her a real sense of strength and purpose. The script takes a chance with a rare female Indian ass-kicker, and she's up to the task of making the most of it. I don't think I've seen a cooler heroine in all of Bollywood cinema. Amitabh Bachchan proves why he was so damn popular for all those years in the dual role of Don and Vijay. As Don, he's ruthless and charismatic; as Vijay, he's carefree and charming. Bachchan masterfully creates a character who can take advantage of all the sympathies the script offers him to take. Had a less talented star been in the lead role, this movie wouldn't have been half as good since concern for Vijay is what really fuels the suspense. Finally, there's JJ. His situation is no less desperate than Vijay's, and the performance by the actor is no less compelling. I really miss movies that feature adult stars. I've done enough railing on the cult of youth in this review, so I won't rehash that except to say that it's so much nicer to see a movie full of characters with real depth, with some lines on their face, and with motivation for their actions beyond looking cool.

Finally there is the music. Like everything else in this movie, it kicks some major ass. What you here on Bombay the Hard Way is a good sample of what the film has to offer. Hardcore funky action tunes. It's one of the best scores from a decade in which great scores for action movies were the norm. Kalyanji Ananji really outdoes himself. The song and dance number music is not bad either. A couple 1970s style Bollywood pop songs from the ladies, Amitabh Bachchan's strange but enjoyable "I'm the Don!" number, and a couple more traditional sounding songs from scenes involving street performers and drunken revelry round out the wah-wah peddle drenched 1970s action music, lending an air of exoticism to it, unless of course you happen to be from India, where Indian things are not especially exotic.

It all comes together to make Don a fabulously entertaining piece of pulp cinema. It's got tons of action, a great story, great characters, and musical numbers that are at worst inoffensive and at times even enjoyable since they are grounded in the reality of the film and not just some wild forays into music video art. If you are looking for a good Indian film but are scared by all the festivities, Don is a great place to start. It's long but never dull, and the musical indulgences are subdued. What's more, it's just a damn good action film. Don is a shining example of why a well-written, well-performed film is so much more enjoyable than any of those dime a dozen blockbusters we have now. Despite the silliness that may creep into the story, Don makes you care about the characters, and that makes you care about the movie. Amitabh Bachchan and Zeenat Aman deserve places at the top of the action film pyramid, and Don is the reason why. If you want to see one great example of 1970s action, you could do a hell of a lot worse than...Don!

Labels: Action, Bollywood, Stars: Amitabh Bachchan, Stars: Zeenat Aman, Year: 1978