Directed by: Ram Gopal Verma
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Paresh Rawal, Sudeep and Riteish Deshmukh.
Rann fails at every level as a movie. The script and screenplay are extremely weak. The characterisations are bad. The dialogues are downright corny and cliched. The camera work is a disgrace. The music is worse than pathetic and the direction, well the less said the better. The acting was below average but that is not the fault of the actors. The script just did not give them any scope for showcasing their skills.
The story is as follows: Malik (Bachchan) is the head of national news channel renowned for his ethics and principles. However, his brand of ethical and responsible journalism is not helping him in winning the TRP battle against a former colleague Amrish (Mohnish Behl) who packages news in the form of sensational entertainment on his channel. On the advise of his industrialist brother-in-law, Rajat Kapoor who is completely wasted in this role, Malik's son Jai (Sudeep) makes a discreet deal with a corrupt politician (Paresh Rawal) to air a fake sting framing the Prime Minister in exchange for the money required to save his father's failing channel and to set up a few more.
Jai convinces his father to air the fake string operation which results in the government getting toppled. This helps Rawal's character in usurping the PM's position. However, an earnest young reporter (Riteish Deshmukh) at Malik's channel feels that something is not right and decides to investigate the sting itself. He unearths the scam that has been committed and confronts Malik with the evidence. Heart-broken that his son duped him into committing such a travesty he goes on air, apologises to the country and exposes the people involved in the scam.
The issue Rann attempts to deal with is topical: the rat race that news channels are in to give the viewers 'breaking news' and to what extent they will go to increase their ratings. But just a topical subject does not make a good movie. Research is very important and Rann is a very badly researched film. No attempts are made to show the viewer the working of a news channel. Reitesh Deshmukh's character is always watching his channel on television but never shown doing any journalistic work which usually involves ferreting for stories, meeting sources, confirming the validity of sources and finally typing out the news story.
Mr. Bachchan's character is extremely preachy and sermonises whenever he is on screen. As the head of a news channel he delivers the news after sermonising on the need for ethical journalism, unbiased journalism etc etc. It feels as if the script writers and the directors want to drill it into the viewers that Mr. Bachchan's character is ethical, unbiased almost Gandhian in his approach towards news. When his wife throws a fit on hearing that their son wants to marry a Muslim girl he gives her and thus us the viewer another sermon. The movie ends with a 15 minute long monologue/sermon on the media and its role in society and news should not be fabricated for TRPs. The monologue is delivered extremely well by Mr. Bachchan but ruined by the craziest and dumbest camera work in recent times. Instead of keeping the camera on Mr. Bachchan, Verma has the camera move into weird angles distracting the viewer from really appreciating the subtle facial and vocal inflections Mr. Bachchan achieves.
Ram Gopal Verma uses bizarre camera techniques and extremely loud music to build drama and tension. These are very similar to the techniques in Sarkar and Sarkar Raj. However, in this film they fall flat. The camera work is extremely irritating. The loud background score further underlines that fact that after Company, music in Verma's movies have been extremely poor.
Verma could have used the story to critically explore the ways in which selected areas of ‘real world’ communications operate in global and national contexts. Here was an opportunity to analyse public diplomacy and propaganda in the news media as well as critically evaluate the existing journalistic trends in India (predominantly television and print media). Instead Verma has decided to make a movie that is preachy and does not engage the viewer in any intellectual debate. These faults combined with the extremely shoddy film-making result in a horrible experience at the theatre.
Ram Gopal Verma needs to introspect and realise that he has truly not lived up to the potential he showed with such fantastic films as Rangeela, Satya and Kaun. Each one these films were different in their genre and were very well constructed and put together. He needs to realise that good filmakers in India and the world over chose diverse genre and do not stick to one particular style.
