Rann: India 24/7– A Preview

If it is a Ram Gopal Varma movie, then controversy can’t be far behind. Rann is his next movie and it has already aroused a lot of deliberate and unintentional controversy. First of all, its promo featured a parody of India’s National Anthem. Even though after court’s orders the song has been removed, but needless to say that it gave Rann the publicity that it wanted. Then, in a strange turn of events, the director has changed the movie’s name to India 24/7.

Starring Amitabh Bachchan, Riteish Deshmukh, Rajpal Yadav, Paresh Rawal and Gul Panag, India 24/7 is said to be a comment on the society, media and politics of India.  The movie is still in its early stage of promotion and only the “First Look” has been released, but from its look and feel, we can say that it’s going to be on the lines of Sarkar Raj.

This is Ram Gopal Verma’s most ambitious project in a long while and considering the fate of his movies lately, we might say that he terribly wants India 24/7 to succeed. It promises to give an insight look on how today’s news channels work and operate. Ram Gopal Verma has always been known for the realism in his movies (if we don’t consider few of his last projects) and in this movie too, fans would expect real and unbiased look at the media.

Amitabh Bachchan, who is Ram Gopal Verma’s favorite, plays Vijay Harshwardhan Malik who is the founder of first 24 hours news channel in India – 24/7. Vijay believes in journalistic ethics and doesn’t want to give into the new age style of sensational journalism. But this has caused his channel to slip into oblivion.

Rajpal Yadav plays Anand Prakash Trivedi who has a talent for creating news out of almost nothing whereas Purab Shastri plays a serious character for a change. He plays a young, enthusiastic journalist with true journalistic ethics. Gul Panag plays Nandita Sharma who is an assistant ad filmmaker who couldn’t care less about what’s happening in the country. The film also stars Paresh Rawal as Mohan Pandey who plays a corrupt politician.

Looks like Ram Gopal Verma has tried to put every element of Indian society and media in the movie – from indifferent youth to corrupt politician, from sensational news monger to righteous journalist.

What remains to be seen is that whether Ram Gopal Verma be able to salvage his reputation through India 24/7 or not. His last few movies have nothing but historical disasters at the box office and his outing with the former Chief Minister of Maharashtra to the 26/11 tragedy site didn’t go down well with any Indian.

Will this social comment on the country do the trick? We will have to wait for the release of the movie to know that.