'Rocketry: The Nambi Effect' Review: Gotta be Maddy for Nambi for this!

Rocketry The Nambi EffectUA Drama actionDir R MadhavanCast R Madhavan Karthik KumarRating Itrsquos impossible not to get swayed by the sheer moviemadness of R Madhavan actor nicknamed Maddy whorsquos written the story screenplay dialogues besides directed produced this film shot with separate versions in three languages headlined by himself on the screen as wellAs an actor in movies Madhavan uniquely positioned as a Tamilian from Jamshedpur has had a fine bilingual career notably loved among desi female audiences as the lsquopaavamrsquo pinup you can introduce your parents toIn the role of a state scientist here Madhavan 52 ages over decades to shed himself through performance and prosthetics enough that yoursquore fairly convinced itrsquos not him yoursquore witnessing on the screen But the reallife aerospace engineer Nambi Narayanan himself that the film is based on At one point the actual personrsquos face merges with the actorrsquos and even that doesnrsquot feel too odd This is Madhavanrsquos finest work so farWhat could have drawn the actorwriterproducerdirector in the mould of Kamal Hassan to go this far for a part I guess his involvement with the personstory concerned Which is that of a technocrat at ISRO who was falsely framed arrested in an espionage case back in 1994 mdash accussed of passing on supposedly precious rocketry tech to Pakistan in lieu of 9 lakh and cheap sex What Nambi went through being publicly derided as a traitor is heartbreaking of courseHerersquos the issue with getting overwhelmingly close to your subject though mdash something that nonfiction writers journalists included are naturally wary of You dive too deep into their pains and concerns life and times therersquos the fear of drowning in the quicksand of their detail Forgetting for a moment if the audience is as engaged with the story itself as they are with the cause of course Sometimes not just God but also the bore is in that detailRocketry The Nambi Effect is doubtlessly an oversincere film in that sense The production design and VFX passes grade surely It feels lambi long not so much for the running time as for the writing scenes story structure etc that doesnrsquot adequately draw out the characters particularly the leading man in a way that you wanna root for them viscerallySomewhat within the same subject whatrsquos a fine example to compare this film against lately Irsquod say Benedict Cumberbatch starrer The Courier 2020 Of course no two stories are the sameThe stakes here are comparatively lower Science is central to this theme The nonstop jargon for what Nambi does for a living mdash besides procuring tech from civil aerospace programmes abroad mdash might be the opposite of the oversimplification in the Vidya Balan starrer Mangal Mission 2019 on ISROrsquos Mars orbiter mission of 2013 Nambirsquos work was instrumental to this Mars mission as well where he was the project directorBut thatrsquos not why we know him or that there is a film on his life It is more so a painstakingly thoroughexhaustive affidavittestimony of an accused in the court of public opinion to explain how a Kafkaesque state did him in while he sat there clueless getting beaten up mercilessly in an unexplained nightmare of sorts The film feels like a lawyer arguing a case for a common man caught in a strange vortex This will interest law students more yoursquod thinkAnd yet while the story feels too flat for far too long the penny really drops when actual events start unfolding in the final 30 minutes or so Which is when the point of this picture kicks in and wherein resides its relevance as wellThat is to show in broad daylight how the deep state within this nation state mdash in the form of shadowy government figures answering to conmen politicians indeed people associated with spyingintelligence mdash can actively work towards destroying innocentsrsquo lives and reputation on command Because they have unfettered power to do so And are absolutely accountable to no one certainly not to average citizens God knows how many such stories there are Every page of investigative journalist Josy Josephrsquos book The Silent Coup The History of the Indian Deep State reveals a new accountYou genuinely start to feel for Nambi he spent 50 days illegally in prison when you compare his plight to so many activists politicians journalists bureaucrats harmless regular Joes screwed even further bulldozed by a state turning rogue against its ownThe creative enthusiasm mustnrsquot stop at a scientist Others deserve a series of their own Glad this film got made It might find even greater love on an OTT platform Didnrsquot mind being in the theatre of course

'Rocketry: The Nambi Effect' Review: Gotta be Maddy for Nambi for this!

Rocketry: The Nambi Effect
U/A: Drama, action
Dir: R Madhavan
Cast: R Madhavan, Karthik Kumar
Rating: ***

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Home / Entertainment / Bollywood News / Article / 'Rocketry: The Nambi Effect' Review: Gotta be Maddy for Nambi for this!

'Rocketry: The Nambi Effect' Review: Gotta be Maddy for Nambi for this!

Rocketry: The Nambi EffectU/A: Drama, actionDir: R MadhavanCast: R Madhavan, Karthik KumarRating: ***

Trending Stories

Latest Photos

Latest Videos

Latest Web Stories

Mid-Day Fast

Rocketry: The Nambi Effect
U/A: Drama, action
Dir: R Madhavan
Cast: R Madhavan, Karthik Kumar
Rating: ***