Karnataka   

A recipe for disaster

Don Muthu Swami (Hindi)

Cast: Mithun Charaborty, Hrishitaa Bhatt

Director: Ashim Samanta

What do you do when you are the journeyman son of a vintage filmmaker? You turn up and make kitsch. That has been the story of Ashim Samanta, son of the peerless Shakti Samanta.

While the father gave us “Amar Prem” and “Aradhana”, the son is not up to scratch. Not after having directed films for a little over 25 years now. He began with “Aamne Saamne” with Mithun Chakraborty in the lead in 1982.

He does nothing to cover himself with glory with “Don Muthu Swami”, a film that can invite scores of invectives but can be safely described as a waste of time. Mithun Chakraborty, an Ashim faithful, has clearly had his innings. Ashim, apparently, still has some illusions about his box office prowess.

So, he gives Mithun the title role of a don who gave up his wicked ways because his father wanted it while on his deathbed. That the father was powerful enough to administer a few slaps to the errant son seconds before he breathed his last makes an absolute mockery of it all.

Anyway, the don, predictably, does not find the going easy. Throw in a case of mistaken identities, of gems and diamonds stolen or smuggled, and a slew of actors, under-worked and over-eager, and you have the recipe for a disaster. That is the fate of this film.

Mithun as the lead does what he reserves for B-grade formula films: he laughs, snarls and screams. Just the way he has done in several mindless potboilers which came unannounced and went unnoticed.

Talking of unnoticed reminds us of Hrishitaa Bhatt, the long-faced lady deserving of a short film career. She attempts to play some kind of a sex kitten here. But all she can do is to send out advertisements for celibacy even as she dons a sarong.

Shakti Samanta had an enviably successful reign as a top-notch director. And the son, even as he seeks gratification and his own place under the sun, has only erred and sinned so far. “Don Muthu Swami” is clearly not the way to redemption.

Z.U.S.

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