Lots of other people are looking for him too, including D.S.P. He’s wanted by Interpol, so badly that they have sent a fluent Hindi-speaking agent to look for him (a fact that should make the Bombay police just a tad suspicious, but doesn’t). Don is a kingpin in one of those sinister international smuggling rings that obsessed Bombay filmmakers in the 1970s (probably because they financed most films of the period). The plot is too complex to describe, but makes sense (mostly) when you watch it. Okay, you see the possibilities here…but you don’t really, unless you’ve seen the film.
Practically everything good in the film-and there is a surfeit-comes in doubles: exploding suitcases, Interpol agents, escapes from tall buildings via ropes that are severed, cute kids, lots of entendres, and Bachchan himself, who puts in stellar performances as both the Really Evil Goan crime boss “Don,” who sports killer shades and razor-sharp bell-bottomed suits, and Vijay, his happy-go-lucky desi doppelganger from the banks of the Ganga, who chews paan incessantly, puts surma (collyrium) around his eyes, wears a lungi, and dances on the pavements of Bombay with bells on his ankles to earn coins to support the street urchins he’s adopted. It has: international smugglers, subplots aplenty, jokes about Bombay, Banaras, and other films, uproarious action sequences (the credits include “Car Chase Driving: Haji”-who I believe was once my cabbie in Bombay), classic-villain Pran as a crippled safecracker who can walk tightropes, Zeenat Aman at her foxiest, several unforgettable songs, and a totally tongue-in-cheek (or paan-in-cheek) attitude about itself. Although there are no lack of contenders for the title, this might just qualify as the Compleat Amitabh Bachchan vehicle.
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