Direction: Ram Gopal Varma
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Ritesh Deshmukh, Paresh Rawal, Mohnish Behl, Manisha Koirala, Rajat Kapoor, Gul Panag, Raima Sen, Rajpal Yadav
Ram Gopal Varma (RGV)’s latest offering is Rann. Movie managed to raise some eyeballs because of its media-bashing focus. RGV did not really had a successful time in his last few releases and people have started to questions regarding his once famous Midas touch. Since his now notorious ‘RGV ki Aag’, things have gone really haywire for this once considered as harbinger of new age Hindi cinema. That was a fine example of what actually happens when a moviemaker starts assuming himself bigger than the medium; movies.
Phhonk, Agyaat, 13B were some of his attempts that did not find any takers but thanks to Big B who salvaged his Sarkar series and now he is at it again in ‘Rann’. Even at this age, Amitabh Bachchan has continued to defy expectations by giving us ‘Paa’ first and now ‘Rann’. He alone has made this movie worth watching by the sheer force of his talent, charisma and personality.
On the face of it, ‘Rann’ had a wonderful premise and well, of course intention yet the film turns out to be a contrived social and commercial drama. The plot had every potential to be hailed as stark, sensible and thought provoking yet movie successfully manages to fail the vision of its maker. Rann tries hard to expose the media blunders but when you come out of theatre all that you will term it as is simple average neta media story on the surface of a T.V. channel. That’s all.
The story revolves around founder of a private news channel, Vijay Harshvardhan Malik played brilliantly by Amitabh Bachchan. His channel is facing hard times because of its ethical and moral way of reporting news. Enters, Jay (Sudeep), his son, for whom, this is just a business that must earn profit to survive the cut-throat competition. Other end of the spectrum has unethical and immoral Mohnish Bahl who is running a hugely successful news channel because of its focus on sensationalism. Accompanying him is corrupt politician, Mohan Pandey (Paresh Rawal) who plays games to his advantage by using Vijay’s son-in-law Navin (Rajat Kapoor). Pandey aspires to be the Prime Minister and his game plan includes Navin and Jay and stopping them becomes the responsibility of Vijay and an honest reporter played by Ritiesh Deshmukh.
All the lead actors including Big B, Ritesh, Paresh Rawal, Rajat Kapoor and Mohnish Behl have given commendable performances. Watch out for Big B’s 5 minutes speech during the end moments of the film. It’s simply outstanding. All in all, you can go watch the movie if you are feeling bored and get a dose of ever growing feel of Mr. Bachchan’s acting prowess.