By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3 cats
Director: Ram Gopal Varma
Starring: Amitabh Bachchan | Gul Panag | Mohnish Bahl | Paresh Rawal | Ritesh Deshmukh | Suchitra Krishnamoorthi
Country: india
Year: 2010
Running time: 137
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1451797/
Jason says: “Say ‘Bollywood,’ and most American audiences will think of cheerful musicals with weddings and happy endings. That’s not likely to be the entirety of a large country’s film output, of course, and Ram Gopal Varma has built a career in part on grittier material. He opens RANN with a terrorist bombing, but what follows is not a thriller – or, at least, not that sort of thriller.
“The bombing is reported on by two major television news networks – the sensationalistic Headlines 24 and the more reserved India 24×7. The former is fronted and run by Amrish Kakkar (Mohnish Bahl), a former employee of the face and soul of India 24×7, Vijay Harshvardhan Malik (Amitabh Bachchan). India 24×7 is hurting financially, and Malik’s son Jay (Sudeep), who has returned from America to run the business side of things, is looking for ways to keep the network afloat. His brother-in-law, industrialist Naveen Shankalya (Rajat Kapoor), offers him a way, by getting into bed with political opposition leader Mohan Pandey (Paresh Rawal), who proposes that a story discrediting Prime Minister Hooda would be almost unquestioned coming from the respected elder Malik. A potential problem with this scheme, though, is that India 24×7 has just hired a young reporter, Purab Shastri (Ritesh Deshmukh), who idolizes Vijay Malik and has the same ironclad ethics about reporting the news – and has a sense that something isn’t right.
“That’s a lot, and that’s not all that’s going on – there’s a subplot involving corporate espionage between the two networks, for instance, and another about Jay’s love for a Muslim woman (Neetu Chandra). We spend a fair amount of time on the latter, enough for it to be a second heavy-handed social message, with Bachchan actually delivering two separate speeches about how Hindus and Muslims should get along and not fear each other. That’s a lot, considering that the central theme of the film, that operating news reporting organizations with a profit motive does a terrible disservice to the people, only gets one. It’s the biggest storyline and character that winds up seeming sort of extraneous by the end of the film, adding loose ends and ambiguity to a movie that really doesn’t seem to be the ambiguous type.
“As you might gather from the talk of speeches, this isn’t a particularly subtle movie, perhaps not even by Bollywood standards. It is not just a vehicle for getting the audience to consider the story’s messages, but Varma and writer Rohit G. Banawlikar are going to make absolutely sure that you don’t miss them. That extends to just about every facet of the production. I’ll readily admit that it may just be my relative ignorance, but Pandy seemed almost ridiculously ‘gangsta’ for somebody leading a political party – he always wears tinted sunglasses, even during television interviews, walks around with an Uzi-toting entourage, and otherwise just screams ‘obvious criminal’ (maybe a lot of perfectly nice folks have that look in India, but nobody else in the movie does). The music often works like a hammer, too; though this isn’t a musical, there are plenty of songs with thudding hip-hop baselines on the soundtrack that tell you exactly what the movie wants you thinking, and especially during the first half, any line or shot that might be a surprise or a betrayal (no matter how small) is accompanied by the Musical Cues of Doom. The filmmakers at times can’t seem to decide whether they want Rajpal Yadav’s character to be satirical or broad comic relief.
“For all that, there are definite signs of why Varma is one of India’s more celebrated directors of crime and thrillers. He does a nice job giving each of the film’s dozen or so significant characters time, especially splitting time between Vijay, Jay, and Purab so that none of them dominates the film at the expense of the others. When the conspiracy story takes off during the film’s second half, it moves along at a brisk clip and seems neither too complicated nor too obvious. And while things often seem somewhat exaggerated or loud, Varma and company make the theatricality work, once the audience is settled into that mode of storytelling.
“It’s not a bad cast he’s working with, either. Sudeep especially does a nice job of playing Jay as having both noble and unpleasant facets; it’s an impressively complex character and charismatic performance. Ritesh Deshmukh has a certain charm as Purab, especially in his scenes with Gul Panag as his girlfriend Nadita. Neetu Chandra is one of those inhumanly beautiful actresses Bollywood produces on a frighteningly regular basis, but makes Yasmin one of the more grounded and familiar characters in the film. And while Amitabh Bachchan at timesstiffens up a bit too much, he does give off the trustworthy aura that Vijay Malik must have.
“With around two hours and twenty minutes to share among many characters and their stories, RANN falls into the trap of being overstuffed for a straightforward drama and feeling a little too small to be epic. It’s not a bad film, though, and a good example of the more serious side of Indian cinema. 3 cats
“Seen 31 January 2010 at the Stuart Street Playhouse (first-run)”