DON Movie Review

Debut filmmaker Cibi Chakaravarthi’s ‘Don’ features Sivakarthikeyan, SJ Suryah, and Samuthirakani as the lead characters. Priyanka Arul Mohan plays the female lead with Anirudh composing music.

The film opens on a rainy night with Chakaravarthi (Sivakarthikeyan) revisiting his college for some purpose. During his journey, he revisits his college life that encapsulates the experiences of happiness, sorrow, loss, love, and moral values.

It looks like Sivakarthikeyan accepted ‘Don’ not for the sake of entertainment elements, but the core theme, which he has always related himself to in real life. He has done a decent job with his performance, but the actual showstoppers are SJ Suryah and Samuthirakani. As the film keeps proceeding, we might wonder, why Sivakarthikeyan’s character is so simple and ordinary, whereas these actors are getting more mileage. However, he justifies it by the end of the movie, where both the father and teacher roles get very well intense and completely satisfying. More than analyzing them, we tend to develop a strong connection with our lives indeed. The role that Shivangi plays looks befittingly perfect in relevance to her real life nature. The cuteness and innocence in her character is neatly exhibited by her performance. Cibi Chakaravarthi deserves special mention for this writing. Yes, there are negatives, where the screenplay looks too stretched out. We aren’t able to get to the point where Bigg Boss fame Raju and Shariq were roped in for the roles that didn’t have any mileage for them. On the other end, Priyanka Arul Mohan’s role looks forcefully inserted to make sure that the audiences get a balance between entertainment and emotions. This could have been the reason why the songs are too limited than a regular Sivakarthikeyan movie. The other actors have good scope, but they don’t shine like Samuthirakani and SJ Suryah.

Anirudh’s musical score is appreciable. The first song ‘Jalabulajangu’ is sure to leave the theaters enthralled. ‘Bae’ is quite a good one, but doesn’t appropriately fit the screenplay, and ‘Private Party’ seems to be purposefully included for the sake of entertainment factors. These two songs don’t fit into the screenplay, but they are enjoyable. The cinematography and art department deserve special mention.On whole, ‘Don’ starts on an entertaining note, but ends with an emotional one. It would leave everyone’s travel memory down the lane for a few moments, and Cibi deserves special mention for this reason. While he intends to make an emotional movie, he has tried embellishing it with humor, dance, and romance, which eventually gets eclipsed by the end.