While the buzz created around the entire "Jana Gana Rann" song in the movie Rann helped people realize that Ram Gopal Varma was making a movie around the Hindi News Media and probably also helped draw people into the theaters during the opening weekend, I now know why the movie didn't have even a decent run at the box office, so much so that even I had forgotten about this movie of his until I was reminded of it in quite a funny way, more on that later.


Now any movie which stars Amitabh Bachchan, Ritesh (or is it Ritiesh or Riteish) Deshmukh, Paresh Rawal, Rajat Kapoor, Sudeep (of the Kannada movie industry fame) naturally has high expectations running on it. Add to this mix is the fact that it is directed by RGV, and the expectations are sky-high. Putting aside all the hype and expectations from this crew, the fact that RGV is making a movie which supposedly exposes the politician-businessman-media nexus and whose tag line reads "when a voice of conscience cannot be heard & when democracy is remote controlled", I expected at least some intelligent fare.


Rann, the movie itself is quite pedestrian. And like most of the reviews read (whose links I have pasted down below), I too have to say that the movie reduces itself to the sensationalistic and jingoistic attitude of the Hindi News media which Rann portrays. All in all, this movie is a total waste of time, energy and effort spent in watching it. 


I am not even bothering to go into the plot details of the movie as it would be another waste of time, effort and the energy expended in it. Watch this movie if and only if you are a really big fan of  Sudeep, the Kannada actor. His performance is quite nice and given the level of mediocrity displayed by the rest of the ensemble cast, his performance would qualify as the 'stand-out performance' in this movie. And Rajat Kapoor seriously needs to re-think his roles. He seems to be playing too many of these suave, smooth, nasty businessman-with-dirty-political-connections kinds of roles. I know for a fact that there is more to his repertoire than just that. And what in God's name was Amitabh Bachchan doing in this movie, I fail to comprehend.


PS: Just for the record, I watched it free on Yahoo India's new Movieplex website.


PPS: If you look carefully at the poster, Amitabh seems to be imploring us not to watch the movie at any cost :-)


Related links


Nikhat Kazmi's review for the Times of India
Rajeev Masand's review for IBNLive.com
Mayank Shekar's review for the Hindustan Times
Anupama Chopra's review for NDTV Movies
Wikipedia link to the movie
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