Dec 19, 2009 06:42 PM
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There is a certain amount of dishonesty about this film – the dishonesty lies in the way its promos mislead one into believing that ‘
Rocket Singh – Salesman of the Year’is yet another mindless comedy trying to bank upon the comic-value of a turban-clad Sardar (yet another light-year old cliché in Bollywood, since a Sardar has to be depicted either as a chest-thumping, jingoism-pumped Pakistan-basher or say, an idiot-looking comic creature - if bollywood script-writers are to be believed). Fortunately, however, the dishonesty about ‘
Rocket Singh’* ends there itself. The rest is all about an honest and sincere attempt by the thinking-man’s director (Shimit Amin), who dishes out yet another intelligent movie with its screenplay (written by Jaideep Sahni) essentially setting the pulse of the movie (even though Rocket Singh* may not be at per with his debut movie Ab Tak Chhappan* on this front). ‘Rocket Singh’* is painstakingly crafted for a cross-section of the movie-watchers with a refined taste. In my opinion, there is hardly any mass-customization –
It is definitely not meant for the masses even though metro-based young go-getters are likely to identify with its characters to the maximum extent possible. The protagonist (Ranbir) happens to be a ‘Sardar’ with no obvious reasons for him being a ‘Sardar’, if not for the reason that he had to be depicted as a God-fearing devout sikh. However, there is a subtle cause-and-effect relationship, in case, you decide to share my take on Ranbir’s get-up – the turban and the naturally-grown beard on his face allow only a limited exposure of his face including his eyes and he utilizes his large expressive eyes brilliantly on more than one occasion, specially, during those moments when he gets lampooned mercilessly by his boss.
Barring his religious affiliation, he is just a regular desi* youth – having not much to boast about in terms of academic credentials and hence, having not much of a career choice as well. However, unlike Chetan Bhagat’s description of ‘today’s youth’ who are ‘educated but clueless’, this affable ‘joker-sardar’ is not clueless. He knows for sure where his passion lies for he wants to make it big as a sales-man. So here we go - our average fun-loving guy with big dreams suddenly lands in the big bad corporate world. However, Shimit’s treatment of the corporate world portrayed through a PC assembling agency, its CEO as well as its sales-team, telephone-operator, and clientele is almost immaculate.
If not anything else, the realistic portrayal of the theme as well as the cast, quite effectively gives the movie the much-needed sophistication absence of which by now has become the most easily recognizable ‘trade-mark ’ of a bollywood movie – be it a masala* one or say, an off-beat attempt. Welcome to the era of slice-of-life mainstream movies ! Shimit also manages to do sort of a casting coup, in the sense, that the entire cast of the movie take their respective roles with a Forest Whittaker-ish level of dedication, thereby, making it very difficult even to visualize any other actor in place of Puri (CEO), Girish (Service Engineer) or say, Nitin (Manager of the sales team) or even Mishra (office boy).
The amount of sincere home-work that surely has gone into finding these talented actors, I guess, could be incredible. In the role of Ranbir’s love interest, however, Sherena (Shazahn Padamsee) was left with very little to do. You may call it a bit of lenience shown to a debut actor by an otherwise demanding director, if you please. However, at the very core of the story-line of the movie there is an interesting ‘reel-life meets real-life’ dimension, something that went unnoticed by many for some reason I’ve no clue about.
The way Rocket Sales Corporation* starts to cannibalize AYS (At Your Service) Pvt Ltd. in a clandestine manner may offer an uncanny resemblance to the till-date-oft-debated manner in which Narayan Murthy abruptly staged a mass-exodus one fine day from Patni Computer Systems (PCS) flanked by six other colleagues including Nandan Nilekeni, N S Raghavan, Shibulal and Kris Gopalkrishnan to launch his own company Infosys. His erstwhile mentor Narendra Patni, founder of PCS, an exceptionally brilliant scholar himself, still licks his wounds as Narayan Murthy went on to build a massive empire leaving his mentor far…far behind. The simple yet hard-to-practice USPs (charging wafer-thin margin, honoring even a tight delivery-schedule commitment, not forgetting old ‘component suppliers’, ‘no kickback’ ideology and practicing a ‘relationship marketing’ with its clientele) of Rocket Sales Corporation* may remind you of Narayan Murthy’s ideology of creating a value-based organization (Does the famous catch-phrase of INFOSYS - Powered by Intellect, Driven by Values – ring a bell?). However, on its way to create a value-based organization, Rocket Sales itself begins to thrive on dubious business-principles until the same gets finally unearthed one day. Rocket Sing, * therefore, in a very tongue-in-cheek way, confronts you with some age-old unanswered riddles – what is business ethics? How much is too much? Is it ethically wrong to be a wee bit manipulative while pursuing your dream passionately? The
