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Rocket Singh Hindi Movie Review – 3.5/5

Ranbir Kapoor plays Harpreet Singh Bedi, a lanky Sikh who struggled through his college mark sheet and is now ready to sell. Armed with more than his fair share of enthusiasm, the good-natured lad finds himself in a trainee job in a ruthlessly competitive office full of computer-selling sharks. Harpreet watches, wide eyed, as targets are met and chowkidars are bribed, but the morally staunch boy raised by his grandfather can’t quite stomach high-stakes skull duggery, and before he knows it, he trips over his own goofy grin.

The boy, as we are all getting used to saying, is excellent. Two films ago, Ranbir Kapoor acted in something where more attention was paid to his tee-shirts than to plot, and yet now he slips so comfortably into the skin of this humdrum Harpreet that it’s easy to forget his glamour. He’s a versatile, instinctive actor working on roles that are much harder than they look: in this film, he’s burdened by the most trite lines in the script, about belief and friendship and ethics, but his earnestness sees him carry them through.

Seldom do we see a romantic track handled so casually, but Shimit knows love is completely incidental to Harpreet’s story, and even though the director is obsessed with detail — it isn’t a coincidence that this tale of entrepreneurship sees Harpreet nicknamed HP, like a certain computer company formed in a garage, or that he goes to work at a store that is part of the Tata umbrella, a nod to the entrepreneur like no other — he lets the romance drift in and out of the narrative, treating it with a breezily light hand. Smashing.

The best films about sales are compelling narratives about savage closers, like David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross or Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, audiences lapping up the con-games used by piranhas in action, but the Rocket Singh story is the exact antithesis of the ‘greed is good’ dictum: this is about a straightforward, sincere lad who believes in sharing.

Rocket Singh might not be everyone’s idea of a good time. It’s not a film that grips you from the word go, or one that leaves you rolling in the aisles, but it’s an impassioned effort that tosses skepticism out the window. Watch it, really.