CAST: R MADHAVAN, SIMRAN, SHAHRUKHKAHAN, SURIYA, RAJIT KAPOOR, GULSHAN GROVER, SAM MOHAN, 

DIRECTOR: R MADHAVAN

A biopic about the life and times of Nambi Narayanan, a Rocket scientist who worked for the Indian Space Research Organization.

Nambi Narayanan’s story is written and directed by R Madhavan who purportedly spent over five years on the project, making sure that the astonishing and heartbreaking journey of this man gets told to the world. The film focuses on the extremely talented man and several milestones he achieved in his professional life, only to be accused of espionage against the country that he wanted to serve and to take to new heights in terms of space research and technology.

First and foremost, the film is set up as an interview with flashbacks to the various chapters of Nambi’s life which makes the story more of a chronicle, leaving very less scope for deviation from the main narrative.

The Hindi version is helmed by Shahrukh Khan and the Tamil version by Suriya.

The first chapter of sorts is the story of his tenure with his mentor Vikram Sarabhai (Rajit Kapoor) and his colleague, APJ Abdul Kalam (Gulshan Grover) , amongst others.

The story takes off with his studies with a world of genius minds at Princeton, where his skills and knowledge are honed under the tutelage of world-famous minds who teach him to think differently.

After this, Nambi refused a job offer with NASA, to choose to work towards the advancement of the Indian space research goals. He negotiated huge contracts to benefit the Indian goals  and clocked contracts to help in creating cryogenic engines to power rockets in order to enable Indian satellites to launch in space, the young age of 25.

As India was becoming a force to be reckoned with due to his and his teams’ efforts, Nambi was suddenly pulled into a scandal leading 50 days of torture and questioned for accusations of espionage with little to no evidence that ruined his personal and professional career.

It was heartbreaking to realize that I watched this very important story of what should be a lesson to Indians here and everywhere in an empty theater.

Given that the movie is technical, with a lot of scientific procedural sequences, many disjointed narrations that come with chronicled approach to story telling and a story of a media trail, herd mentality and the audacity of someone to question the allegiance of people who have visibly devoted and delivered for the benefit of the country; with no song or dance routines or sexy babes, it might not be a mass entertainer for the theater crowd.

It was befitting then that Shahrukh Khan was the anchor for the movie in Hindi because who else would know that feeling of being told he is not Indian enough, better than him.

To make movies look extra patriotic, Indian story telling has the propensity to stereotype Indians abroad or Non- Indians. This movie accomplishes the same goal for the benefit of its Indian eyeballs by very wooden performances by the foreign actors.

The stereotyping in writing of the Russia – America feud, the American consumerism, the women, everything was extremely stereotypical, and no thought was given lessen the shwang wang wang of it.

The locations are absolutely spectacularly short by the DOP of the movie Sirsha Ray.

Where the movie should have spent more time and did not was the entire espionage set up and its debunking. It fails to establish the case, its veracity, the frugal evidence, the corruption, the political angle, the entire fight that Mr Narayanan had to mount to win for his integrity and his walk back into ISRO.

The final sequences have Mr Narayanan himself with Shahrukh Khan and that was woven in very well. In those emotional few minutes that SRK could only pull off, Nambi refused to accept the apology of the Indian people. He is right. When you are wronged, it is not only you but your family that suffers too. Mr Nambi’s wife Meena (Simran) almost lost her mental balance when people attacked their family for things Mr Nambi had not done.

As he says, if I am innocent, that means someone is not.

We are given an angle about NASA being the mastermind of these attacks in Rule 56 as no evidence or narrative is laid out to prove it so it seems like a bit of a myffic to whip up the anti-America rhetoric which seemingly is the undercurrent throughout the movie even when the guy receives a NASA scholarship to Princeton on American tax dollars.

Nothing to take away from R Madhavan for his brilliant, meticulous work. Wish it does pique the interest of people through word of mouth soon.