Pocket Mein Rocket
‘Rocket Singh - Salesman of the year’ was on my bucket list since long. You don’t see a movie on business too often in this country despite it being home to millions of businessmen.
The movie started well with proper characters built. Both production design and the camera are nice and go with the movie’s pace and motive. It doesn’t have extra totally-off-the-track songs (item numbers). Neither romance takes a significant place in the narrative. Although it very much is there.
But even with all that, the ending takes a Bollywood-y turn when a cold-blooded business tycoon returns the brand he just acquired. I’m not saying it’s entirely impossible but the way it happened was a bit too dramatic.
There are a couple of nice moments in the movie as well which I liked. All the partners were selected based on the skills they have and not the basis of degree or background. More importantly, the narrative showed those characters portraying those skills.
The whole crew was relatively new and moderate in terms of stardust for sure. But the casting was really good. Seems like the team had real confidence in both their stories and storytelling abilities. A real use case of practising what they preached in the movie. Looked up the director for more movies and found out Shimit Amin directed Chak De! India and Ab Tak Chhappan. Will try to give them a shot too. This reminds me of another director, Abhinay Deo. His most famous creation was Delhi Belly - and I also liked Blackmail by him. But I would like to discuss his work in another post.
One last thought about how the movie portrays a business. In many cases, the businesses run in a shady manner because the customers are helpless and they don't have options. The moment they get an option of better service, they jump ship real quick. Even the most shrewd 'salesman' does not want to go back to his tricks once he knows he can earn respect by just offering good quality service. In today's world, we see Amazons and Ubers just that. 10 years down the line, these companies might not be in business any more, and although there are lots of allegations against these companies for poor employee conditions, they did create such a huge customer satisfaction expectation, we don't really want to go back to other stores and regular taxis.
Overall, I agree with the message that business is not about numbers but about values. And surely it’s no Silicon Valley or Mad Men or Jana Aranya. But it does feel good to come out of the load of crap Bollywood generates.