Preview of ‘Rann’

Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Sudeep, Riteish Deshmukh, Paresh Rawal, Mohnish Behl

Director: Ram Gopal Varma

Release date: January 29, 2010

Characters

Amitabh Bachchan as Vijay Harshvardhan Malik
The founder of the first ever private news channel in the country, INDIA 24/7, the Harvard-educated Harshvardhan Malik is the country's most respected media personality. He is a hardcore upholder of journalistic ethics. No wonder his channel is battling for survival!

Sudeep as Jay Malik
A go-getter and highly aggressive and ambitious son of Harshvardhan Malik, Jay looks at his father’s news channel purely as a business enterprise that must make profits to justify its existence. He hates that his competition is doing better than him.

Riteish Deshmukh as Purab Shastri
Armed with a degree in journalism, Purab Shastri truly believes that the media should be the check point for the people of a country, and therefore, it should report news, instead of manufacturing news. Purab's thinking sets him apart from most youngsters of the country.

Paresh Rawal as Mohan Pandey
It is every politician's dream to become the Prime Minister of his country. To that extent, the leader of the opposition Mohan Pandey is no different from his contemporaries. The only difference being - if the need arises, Pandey can and will kill to get the coveted chair.

Mohnish Behl as Amrish Kakkar
Amrish Kakkar was the first to have the vision and the foresight to realise that even the business of delivering news can be made entertaining. Amrish therefore can be safely held singularly responsible for taking the television news industry to the dogs, or to the heights, depending on how you see it.

Suchitra Krishnamurthy as Nalini Kashyap
Nalini Kashyap is the programming head of Harshvardhan Malik's news channel, India 24/7. Having been in the industry for long enough, she has developed a practical view of how things operate here. And this comes in direct conflict with what her boss, Harshvardhan Malik, thinks. Juggling the cut-throat world outside with the idealistic universe of her boss, Nalini Kashyap has her job cut out.

Rajat Kapoor as Naveen Shankalya
Naveen Shankalya, apart from being the son-in-law of Harshvardhan Malik, is also one of the topmost industrialists of the country. Despite this, he is the most insecure man on earth, and won't rest till he becomes the number one industrialist in the country. His best buddy Mohan Pandey becoming the Prime Minister of India will surely help his cause.

Gul Panag as Nandita Sharma
The assistant of an ad filmmaker, Nandita Sharma someday hopes to bag an independent feature film. She is in a live-in relationship with her boyfriend Purab. Nandita is smart, educated and intelligent. She is also highly indifferent to what's happening in the country, and first thinks about herself and her man, before anything or anybody else. On both counts, she represents the youth of India.

Neetu Chandra as Yasmin Hussain

An ex-model, and fiancée of Jay Malik, Yasmin watches TV, reads gossip columns, and for most part, takes everything that is dished out to her, at face value. She does not understand the intricacies of power games, and hidden motivations behind actions of people. The resources at her disposal to know what is true and what is not, are limited. She is not innocent, and she is not clever either. Yasmin therefore epitomizes the 'common man'.

Rajpal Yadav as Anand Prakash Trivedi
A creative editor, Anand Prakash Trivedi has a knack for sensationalising even in the driest story and making it sound like the story of the decade with super catchy headlines. More than any filmmaker, he makes far better movies. Only, he calls them News.


Synopsis

Rann means battle. And battle is a fight between large organised forces. In the context of a civil society and its deep complexities, large organised forces (read news channels, political parties and industrial czars) are not just involved in a fight with each other, but more importantly and frighteningly they are battling a war within themselves and this especially true of news channels.

Making news is not the easiest thing in the world. So the next best thing obviously would be to make anything and everything appear to be news.

The ways the news is presented today are much more entertaining than family soaps and thrillers. What's worse is that we enjoy this kind presentation so much that we have got addicted to them.

There is the government - a system which runs the country, then there are wealth creators like industrialists etc and then there are politicians in the ruling party and the opposition.

All the above in a democratic society are supposed to be working for the common people and the one and only means of the common people having any idea as to what those are up to is through the media. Hence the media had been invented as a truth telling machinery serving the purpose of the common people so that they know they are in good hands or in case they are told that they are not, they can hope to exercise the power of their vote to bring about a change.

But in a free economy system where there is so much competition the media by default is lost in its purpose.

The media is a reporting agency. It reports news. News is what is new in what you hear for the first time so to be able to be the first to tell you the various newspapers and channels have an intense competition among themselves and this they do on a need to survive, on an ego to be on the top and on a greed to get rich.

To be ahead of competition means more circulation and higher TRPS which in turn generate more and more ad revenue which will translate into making more and more and more money.

The people who run the media realize their power of influencing the common people, and this inevitably makes them power hungry.

“Ran” would expose the behind-the-scenes truth of how a truth- telling machinery by the very virtue of its positioning has no choice but to corrupt it. lf it is to become a money-making and power-brokering enterprise.