Rocket Singh

I saw this movie only yesterday, in a sparsely occupied auditorium. Obviously the box-office doesn’t seem to be ringing. And I’ve been told that the box-office should be the only parameter for gauging the quality of a movie, as personal preferences can vary due to socio-cultural issues.

Despite that I couldn’t help loving Rocket Singh. I haven’t read a single review written by any of the film experts on this movie and therefore, I do not have the privilege of borrowing anybody else’s opinions. Critical acclaim is another highly contentious point, so let’s not get into that.

Seldom is there a movie that attracts totally polarised reactions. Rocket Singh is one of them. For every person who had loved the movie, there was another who had hated it. Though I fell into the ‘love the movie’ camp right from the start, I could understand why some people would have not liked it at all.

The movie is slow. The dialogues are almost pedestrian. The acting is missable. The settings are ordinary. The characters are commonplace. The story is predictable. So what really is there to like in this movie?

That’s the question that has been plaguing me since I’ve seen it. And this is an attempt to analyse why I liked such a bad movie in the first place. Maybe my taste in movies is not intellectual, but it is mine nevertheless. So one tends to be a little possessive about it.

Coming back to Rocket Singh.

I loved the film because it is slow. It engaged me. And the story unfolded at its own pace without any hurry. It was like enjoying a glass of single-malt on ice, while sitting peacefully in the balcony, listening to Mark Knopfler. Not like glugging down a can of beer while on a trek.

I loved the film because the dialogues are pedestrian. There are no bombastic speeches. The script is written in a manner that makes you feel like you are not watching a Hindi Film at all. You become a part of the scene because, the characters speak like the characters you meet every day.

I loved the film because the acting is missable. We watch movies with a willing suspension of disbelief. We pay good money and enter a dark auditorium to pretend that the people on the screen are real and not actors and somewhere become a part of their life. This was one movie which really made me feel that nobody was acting. Because nobody was.

I loved the film because the settings were ordinary. Everything in the movie was real. No over the top settings. Nothing that jarred the realism in the acting. The setting just became the backdrop for the characters to do their thing.

I loved the film because the characters are commonplace. It was refreshing to see real people doing real things for a change, rather than pumped up heroes doing impossible things – literal or metaphorical.

I loved the film because the story was predictable. I wanted the good guys to win and they did. I wanted the good guys to not get beaten down by the system and turn over to the dark side. And they didn't. In fact, they rescued some of the bad guys while doing so. I loved that.

It is very difficult to make a film that connects, when all its ingredients are real and ordinary. I think that’s what Rocket Singh is all about. And that’s why I loved it so much.