One of the most hyped and awaited films this season, RANN doesn’t at all match up to the claims of an “intelligent” audience, thanks to Ramgopal Varma’s crush and infatuation with Amitabh Bachchan, often projecting him in unbelievingly idealistic roles. This time RGV has clearly worked hard to set the backdrop for his film to be labelled “cardboard”. Such idealistic characters are extinct now, please! And the same camera angles and background scores, typical of RGV, have added predictability to what could have been an intensely dramatic plot. But that’s another story. And Ramu certainly doesn’t believe in the audiences average intelligence to gather logical conclusions or interpretations out of his shots, which is why at various places he ends up shoving the most obvious props pointing to the already clichéd plot, down the audience’s throat.
The film is about an almost perpendicularly honest media person Vijay Harshvardhan Mallik (Amitabh Bachchan) who runs his channel on “morality”, not wee bit worried about the TRPs. His son Jay Mallik (Sudeep) is of a different mould and is rather done with his father’s useless moralities, and lesser evolved commercial sense, which are not taking the channel anywhere.
On the other hand, another channel headed by an erstwhile colleague Amrish (mohnish Behl), is jogging up the TRP by the day, and this forces Jay to connive with dubious politician Mohan Pandey (Paresh Rawal) and device a coup against the ruling PM, by faking a sting operation. The sting is aired on Vijay’s channel, forcing the PM to resign and make way for Mohan Pandey. This sends the channel’s TRPs soaring, but Purab Shastri, the lead reporter in the story is quick to realize his moral responsibilities and helps Vijay uncover the truth, which was far from what was aired on the channel.
The film lacks meat and falls flat when it comes to screenplay. The characters stand up like pawns on a chessboard-you know which one would do what and move just how much. Such is the predictability. The narrative is least exciting.
Technical faults aside, it seems RGV didn’t get enough time to even research on journalistic etiquettes and how they function in real life. For instance, Purab, who’s a new entry in the organisation, straight away lands his bottom in high profile editorial meetings, sitting and sprinkling his journalistic wisdom on the lesser Gods seated on higher chairs there. And this isn’t all-there are other professional goof ups too shown in the film.
The film is endlessly filled with dialogues, which only God knows how many times have been mouthed to perfection by our actors over the years. Look at this: “Computer ke zamaane mein typewriter nahi chalta” and “duniya mein do tarah ke log hote hain-sher ya bakri”!! And the one which took away the cake was when Vijay finds himself conned into being a part of the coup the background score helps the audience further understand by playing “Kaanch ke jaise saaf usool, kaanch ke jaise toot gaye”!!! It’s almost as if RGV didn’t trust audience’s intelligence to figure out the obvious-it’s been shoved down your throat in the most boring manner. Another sequence where Vijay gives a dramatic speech towards the end of the film, a la Baghbaan, which drags on and on till you decide to have got nothing to do with it!
Though Amitabh Bachchan delivers a restrained performance, the film is too boringly ethical and unnecessarily idealistic, and yes predictably obvious. Some things should have been left on the audiences’ intelligence to be interpreted and judged. RGV indulges in his Sarkar-like camera angles to create drama, so much so that at times the camera rotates so fast you feel your head reeling before you decide to just drop back.
Ritesh Deshmukh, Sudeep, Suchitra Krishnamurthy, Neetu Chandra, and Rajat Kapoor are good and deliver sober performances. The film starts off well but falls short mid way to become conventional and clichéd.
