Director: R. Madhavan
Cast: R. Madhavan, Suriya, Simran, Ravi Raghavendra
Language: Tamil / Hindi
We all know the life of Nambi Narayanan, the controversial ISRO scientist who has been in the news, unfortunately not much for his achievements but for this rather dramatic arrest in a foisted espionage case. Narayanan’s story spanned decades and his fight with the law resulted in him finally being exonerated of all spy charges and even being given compensation by the Supreme Court and the Kerala government. Rocketry: The Nambi Effect attempts to give Nambi’s side of the story into not just the espionage case but also to ISRO and Indian space research. The movie tries to shed light on his contributions and achievements in an attempt to not reduce the scientist’s life to a controversy. It is a story that needs to be told. Does it succeed? Unfortunately, not much.
Written and directed by R. Madhavan, Rocketry follows the life of the scientist from his doctoral days in Princeton University and his various prestigious contributions to the field of aerospace engineering in India. With words like ‘solids’, ‘liquids’ and ‘cryogenics’ floating around, the screenplay does little to help us understand or even fathom the extent of Narayan’s contributions. The first half seems like a patchy attempt at a Science class, and scenes are quite randomly stitched together to make us feel in awe of Mr. Narayanan’s stellar contributions to ISRO. It is quite a task to pick the right achievements (from an array) of a scientist like Narayanan. And Madhavan manages to do that. But the treatment of these achievements on the big screen sticks out like a sore thumb. Huge diplomatic nuances are reduced to a dinner-table conversation. In the film, Nambi Narayanan manages to secure a deal worth 400 million pounds from Colonel Cleaver, the then CEO or Rolls Royce – all over dinner.
Madhavan takes on the titular role and he does justice to it. The first half doesn’t do much to his acting chops. In the second half, we actually get to see the few good moments in the movie. When a false espionage case is foisted on Nambi, the police physically assault him and his family is traumatised and alienated. Madhavan aces these sequences, and for a few moments, we can begin to understand the extent of injustice doled out to Narayanan. The drama is high (as it was in real life) but the scenes from Russia, and France were again amateurish and the panchang reference left me in splits. There is a particularly hilarious scene in USSR where Nambi and other scientists race off into the snow-clad mountains trying to get parts of a rocket out of the country with Americans following them.
Other performances by Karthik Kumar as the CBI officer and Simran as Nambi’s wife, are reasonably well done. Suriya makes the customary appearance as the interviewer in awe of Nambi. But like I said, none of it works well on the big screen without a solid screenplay to tie it all together. Kudos to Madhavan for picking this story for his directorial debut. Good intentions and the real life protagonist are the few good things that work in Rocketry: The Nambi Effect.
Rating: 2/5
