Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year

The way the opening credits are presented, they raise your expectations from the film. And the first 30 minutes are typically reflective of a salesman's life. It is easy to connect with the situations and giggle at the workplace jokes. Our protagonist has just barely graduated & wants to make a career in sales. But he is naive, and has to learn the tricks of the trade soon. To complicate matters, he has demanding bosses & non co-operative peers. Been there.

But soon enough, our guy, with a few other employees of the same company, hatches a plan to prove a point & make some money by creating a dummy company that provides superior service & works on ethical lines only. A good intentioned simple storyline from Jaideep Sahni, but a bit too far-fetched. So, once again, it is up to the director & the actors to elevate it. And they do. Once you get past the fake moustaches & loose wigs, the movie engages you. The script is kept tight & there are no silly song & dance routines to break the flow.

Ranbir Kapoor & Prem Chopra (who plays Ranbir's grandfather) have very good chemistry & all their scenes together are so real & touchy. Ranbir's friends & his love interest do have their moments in the sun, but the movie is not about them. As the director did with ChakDe India, the characters who take the movie forward, including the office peon & the receptionist, are developed well & are given ample screen time & they also carry their characters with ease. Salim-Suleiman have little to do barring the title track (which is missing in the movie), because the movie is not a dramatic melting pot a la Chakde. The screenplay is good, direction is good, and the actors deliver. What the film really lacks is a climax. It ends without a bang; it ends all so smoothly, with a social message thrown in.

One thing that this film confirms is that, in Ranbir Kapoor, we have found the next big thing. As with all his other movies this year, he gets right under the skin of the character, hence making it utterly believable. A director's actor, never the star. 2009 may well be the year in which all his movies came oh too close to being the biggest hits of the year. Rocket Singh may well be the next in that category.

Frankly speaking, "Rocket Singh" is not the usual bollywood kind of movie with the same ages old ingredients of action, love & comedy. It may not be appreciated by the masses, but for a change it's a simple and refreshing flick with everything just in the right proportions as required. The movie neither has any sick side stories yelling loudly to impress the viewers nor there are any silly unwanted songs jumping into the screenplay from nowhere. In other words it's a great piece of art made by a thinking team strictly on the lines of innovative Hollywood projects which are based on variety of subjects written around our daily routine life.

The story talks about a fresh and honest graduate who is looking for a descent job to make his future career. The wickedness of his colleagues and seniors in the office helps him transform into a clever and strategic businessman. But in the process he also has to opt for some unethical means and uses his present job office and resources for his personal benefit. The innovative plot not only enlightens us about the cut throat competition in the Sales line but it also showcases the hardships faced by the innocent customers due to the evil practices adopted by the service providers. The film commences slowly and starts growing on the viewer with its to the point narrative and highly realistic sequences. In fact most of the viewers will find it very easy to relate with various characters in the script portrayed just like the real life people we meet every day.

After his masterpiece "Chakk De India", Shimit returns with another brilliant work which again has a huge contribution coming from his writer Jaideep Sahni. Shimit's subtle treatment of the subject never slides down and he maintains a firm grip on the movie right till its impressive climax. Interestingly, all the incidents in the movie strongly point towards some similar personal experiences of either Shimit or Jaideep in the past. Jaideep splendidly comes up with the most original description of his characters quite close to his "Khosla Ka Ghosla" which also revolved around Delhi and its Punjabi culture. Actually the whole setup of a computer company and its premises in "Rocket Singh" is more relevant to New Delhi's computer hub, Nehru Place (which Jaideep must have seen) and everyone who has visited the premises would readily agree to that. Taking into account all their works together in the past, the writer-director duo is a great team in formation and you can easily expect many more brilliant projects coming from them in the near future.

In the performance arena there are good things to write about almost everyone in the cast. With the most authentic Sikh character's portrayal on the screen till date, Ranbir Kapoor once again excels and makes everyone in the Kapoor family feel proud of their young energetic and hardworking kid. His choice of projects after the unexpected debacle of "Saawariya" clearly proves his gifted cinematic sense and intuition power. While watching him on screen, not even once you feel that he is in a fictional get up of a Sikh. In simple words he just slips into the body of Harpreet Singh Bedi and delivers an effortless, enjoyable and the most impressive performance of his career.

Prem Chopra delivers a lovable cameo. Gauhar Khan impresses in her role of a receptionist and she surely has got the oomph factor to burn the screen. Shazahn Padamsee is fresh and confident as Ranbir's customer cum friend. Everyone else in the team lead by Rocket Singh is perfectly chosen and they skillfully act as true to life realistic characters, especially the computer engineer and his sexy desktops glowing in the night. Cinematography is nothing exceptional and Salim-Sulaiman music is just above average with all the songs used shortly along with the background score.

However, the only probable mistake, the marketing team of "Rocket Singh" has made is that they wrongly promoted the film as a comedy. The promos with Ranbir dancing to the tune of "Pocket Mein Rocket Hai" clearly give you an idea of the movie being a funny take on office politics and life of an salesman. Whereas in reality it's a sensible story of a fresh graduate who goes on to make a confident mark in his very first job of a salesman. Though it has many comedy sequences coming in at regular interval throughout, but still that doesn't allow anybody to simply call it a comedy movie. In fact all the viewers coming in for seeing just another routine, over the top, bollywood comedy may get highly disappointed from the end result they get. So, once again it's an example of wrong promotion tried by the makers to bring in some more crowds in the opening weekend.

But if you ask me then just don't take it as a comedy and go for it if you really want to see a fresh, cool and uplifting movie completely different from what we have been seeing in all this year. In short, "Rocket Singh" is one of those few rare movies which are made without thinking of any favorable box office results. If majority of the viewers like it then that's a good sign of progress being made in the Indian Cinema. But if most of them take it otherwise then that will be the most unfortunate outcome of 2009.

Highly recommended for everyone yearning for a change in Bollywood's choice of subjects.

I went to watch Rocket Singh with the expectation to see a good movie knowing that the same creative team (Shimit Amin and Jaideep) had put together a good movie previously with Chak De India. By the time "Rocket Singh" was over I sat in my seat spell bound and amazed by some excellent story telling by the same creative team. Half way thru the movie I was certain that I was witnessing a special piece of work by a talented team. What works for Rocket Singh is an absolutely crisp script, screen play, dialogues (some of which are very witty), sharp direction and awesome performance by an amazingly talented cast. The casting fits perfectly and Ranbeer deserves special mention for his performance, it is hard to believe that he is only a handful of movies old as an actor. In fact I could not pick anything negative or faulty with the film in my first viewing. Coming to the plot itself, it is about a fresh graduate with ordinary grades who lands a trainee salesman job and is shocked to see the cut throat methods used to succeed both at individual and team levels. He is soon found wanting in terms of the "killer" instinct necessary to survive. But he continues to believe in his ways and shows everyone how success is achieved with out resorting to cut throat/unethical means. The climax is very interesting; the conversation between "Rocket Singh" and Mr. Puri (his ex-employer) is one of the highlights of the movie.

In summary Indian cinema needs more of these movies - engaging stories of "real" people made with utmost attention paid to the story itself. Indian cinema can do with out "Love stories that have blood on them".

--S Rao

This is not an usual Bollywood flick with songs, action and comedy. The movie revolves around a Sikh graduate(portrayed authentically by Ranbir Kapoor) who aspires to be salesman. As he steps into the corporate world, he is shocked by the reality of sales business where unethical practices, cut-throat atmosphere, unrealistic targets, selling products with high markups are norms & customers are seen just as numbers. He doesn't wishes to abide by these norms drawing a lot of flak from seniors and colleagues and gets isolated by them.

He realises that by being nice one can never survive in this competitive world. So he decides to crave his way through the sales business by following his ideology of treating customer as people with heart not as numbers as they are the one who gives business to them and not the other way around. Also stressing on services before sales.

Realistic movie, definitely worth a watch.

This film is truly ahead of its time, i just watched this film and it's hard to believe that this film released in 2009. At a time where bollywood movies were still typical hero heroine and villian(infact most of them still pretty much are), this movie was different and innovative from the rest of the industry. Moreover the message that this movie gives "having ethical business practices, valuing and understanding the customers and their needs is what helps a business to ultimately grow and be succesful instead of deceiting and conning them" is something people have realised quite recently(atleast here in India) and so companies and businesses have quite recently started taking ethics and customer satisfaction more seriously, so yeah this movie is quite ahead of its time. It's sad to see such amazing bollywood movies being underrated and hardly known.