The first couple of minutes of the movie, even before the opening titles, show in a nutshell what TV journalism in India has become. The film further reveals that slowly and surely, even TV channels which were, previously thought of to be upright and unbiased in their coverage of news, get caught up in the race to gain more viewer-ship. So here are my five reasons why you should forget what Ram Gopal Verma has given us in the past, and watch Rann.

1) The growing sensationalism in the media - Unless you’ve been living under a rock for all these years, you know what news on Indian TV has degenerated into. In the race for garnering more viewer-ship, more ad revenues and more TRPs, news has been relegated to the sideline while at the same time, a generous dose of entertainment (mindless to say the least) has been mixed in the programming. The movie explores a few reasons for the same.

As Rajpal Yadav’s characters explains to a director in the movie – “We both are in the same business. You make films, we also make films. Only we call it news.”

Some would say this mix is harmless. What’s wrong if you can get a little entertainment out of news channels as well? But the danger lies in the future when it would be difficult to distinguish between the entertainment part and the actual news part. This movie is for all those people who are already ignorant of this distinction. This movie is for all those people who are tired of the rampant “Breaking News” permanently plastered on TV channel screens.

2) Hard hitting facts - The movie discloses a few facts about how politicians and business-people can manipulate the media into twisting or actually creating news stories out of thin air. Without directly mentioning the parties involved (but giving enough clever hints), RGV has picked up (real) stories from all across India to give an example of the nexus between politics-business and politics-TV media. How many journalists today can honestly say that they haven’t compromised on the quality or content of the news which they report in order to get a few more eyeballs?

4) Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? This is a Latin phrase from a Roman poet, but made famous by Dan Brown in his novel Digital Fortress. The literal translation of the phrase is “Who will guard the guardians?” If the sole medium through which we receive our news are the TV channels and newspapers, who will ensure that the veracity of these news is unquestionable? As is shown in the movie, if facts can be distorted or reversed at the mere mention of money or power, whom will the common man believe when he is watching the news? The scenario described is not far from the Orwellian control of all media by the government or a part of private industry.

3) Rajpal Yadav’s histrionics – Rajpal Yadav plays a wannabe TV anchor at India 24×7 who wants to bring in more creative programming on the channel. In order to achieve this purpose, the character practices – in front of the mirror – the now famous mannerisms of the “b-grade” anchors who have built a whole genre of programs on TV with their loud intonation and their exaggerated descriptions of news. Think . If you jog back your memory a few years back, this trend was most probably started by the now forgotten Suhaib Ilyasi for India’s Most Wanted. But thankfully, RGV has kept this character in limits. Even though you would enjoy the face tweaks and gestures of this enthusiastic reporter, the seriousness of the film would have gone for a toss if he had been given more screen-time.

5) Last but not the least, Amitabh’s and Paresh Rawal’s performance. None of the actors in Rann have a dominating presence in terms of screen-time, but as is expected of them, these two towering personalities put everything into the screentime allocated to them. Paresh Rawal, as the scheming politician Mohan Pandey is menacing and not far from today’s politicians.

The movie has its down-sides too. Some parts of the movie are typical Bollywood. For instance, the part where everyone receives an SMS at the same time on their mobile revealing the truth of Mohan Pandey is hilarious. The telecom companies would have made a killing in this part. One major irritating aspect of the making of the movie was the camera angles. RGV’s cinematographer tried the same angles he tried in Sarkar 2 and fails miserably. Since the movie was about TV news, the least the director could have done is to try out a news studio kind of setup. A static multiple camera setup would have been better than the shaky, twisting angles which the cameraman constantly tries. It’s like the cameramen wanted to go for a susu but the director wouldn’t let him.

All in all, the message that Rann is trying to send across is beautifully exemplified in one of the lines Yashwardhan Malik Vijay Harshvardhan Malik speaks in his closing news broadcast in the film.

…”[For the media industry, ] news was supposed to be the goal, with money being a medium. However, today money has become the goal, with news becoming a medium…”