A child sees his parents brutally murdered by a psychopath and escapes with the killer's gun. End of Phase I. You brace yourself to watch a 1970s kind of revenge saga.
Phase II: The kid kills the murderer with the same gun. Now, you are prepared for story of an innocent boy pushed into a life of crime like Nayagan.
In Phase III, you see a character straight out of Godfather or even Ram Gopal Varma's Sarkar, and this continues till the interval, taking the film on another tangent altogether.
This is the synopsis of the Dileep starrer The Don, directed by Shaji Kailas. The Don is simply a hotchpotch of many action-drama films, clumsily put together.
Dileep has been trying to graduate in doing full-fledged action roles for a while now with films like Runway and Lion, which got mixed reactions at the box-office.
It was his long cherished dream to work with the stylish director Shaji Kailas, but he may not have bargained for this. The film does not do anything good for him. Dileep won't like to remember his character in The Don because it is reduced to a caricature of what an action hero is supposed to be.
Unnikrishnan (Dileep) has spent his childhood in a juvenile home for killing his uncle, who had murdered his parents. One day, he saves the life of Sarkar-like do-gooder Kasim Baba (Lal) after an elaborate fight sequence with flash cuts and freeze frames that invite more boos than claps. As expected, Unnikrishnan becomes Kasim Baba's most trusted man, now rechristened as Salaam in order to make him comfortable in an orthodox Muslim household.
Next, the Baba is killed by his detractors and Salaam is charged with the murder.
In the second half, we are shown how Unnikrishnan/Salaam gets even with his enemies and claims Baba's position.
The only part that seems to be interesting in this film is when comedian Harisree Asokan makes an appearance in the second half to help the hero in the jail.
Someone should tell Dileep that we loved him in Chandupottu and Thenkashipattanam, so he should not try so hard to alienate the audiences.
Rediff Rating: 
