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Vettaikaaran (2009 film)

Vettaikaaran (transl. Hunter) is a 2009 Indian Tamil-language action film directed by debutant B. Babusivan and produced by AVM Productions. The film stars Vijay and Anushka Shetty in the lead roles, while Srihari, Salim Ghouse, Sayaji Shinde and Ravi Shankar appear in supporting roles. Gopinath handled the cinematography while V. T. Vijayan was the film's editor. This was Vijay's first film with AVM Productions and the only film B. Babusivan ever directed.

Vettaikkaran received mixed reviews from critics, but was a commercial success and completed a 100-day theatrical run. The film has collected $1,399,911 at the overseas box office.

Plot

Ravi is a youngster from Thoothukudi who aspires to become a police officer like his role model, Encounter Specialist DCP Devaraj IPS. After completing his PUC, he joins a college in Chennai and also earns a living by driving an auto rickshaw. During the course, he meets Suseela, an IT professional and falls in love with her. Although Suseela rejects Ravi's advances at first, with the help of her grandmother, Ravi succeeds in winning Suseela's heart. Meanwhile, Chella is a gangster and womanizer, meets Ravi's friend Uma in a public place, where she is taking donations for some cause, and immediately develops an attraction to her. When Uma asks Chella to contribute money, he willingly donates by inserting a rupee note in her jacket. Uma feels ashamed and tells her father what happened.

Ravi finds out what happened to Uma through her father, he comes to her defence and beats up Chella, hospitalizing him. His troubles start from there as Chella's father, a powerful don named Vedanayagam, with the help of his right-hand man, a corrupt police officer Kattabomman, begins to create havoc in Ravi's life. Ravi is soon thrown into jail on a false case of drug smuggling and is expelled from college. Suseela is willing to help him where she goes to Devaraj and pleads with him to help Ravi, but Devaraj initially refuses to help as his entire family had died at the hands of Vedanayagam and he himself was blinded by him because he had taken action against him and his gang. However, with the help of his people known in the police department, He saves Ravi from being killed in a fake encounter led by Kattabomman. It is at this stage that Ravi takes up a new persona called Police Ravi to clean up the illegal activities of Vedanayagam and instill hope in the public, something that Devaraj was unable to do.

In the process, however, Vedanayagam kills Ravi's close friend Sugu, prompting Ravi to kill Chella in retribution. Vedanayagam decides to become a minister, in order to prevent Ravi from targeting him and his activities. As Ravi finally plans to kill the newly sworn-in minister Vedanayagam, The police arrive to arrest him. However, Ravi sees Devaraj in the crowd and announces Vedanayagam's location to him just as he is being arrested, allowing Devaraj to assassinate Vedanayagam, effectively avenging his family's death. Devaraj is reinstated into the police force and offers to make Ravi a police officer. However, Ravi refuses, stating that he has found the police officer within himself and that is all he needs to succeed in life.

Cast

Production

Development

During the filming of Kuruvi, B. Babusivan served as one of his assistant directors in the film and wrote the dialogues. Sivan was later prompted to begin his maiden directorial venture with Vijay in the lead role. He was eventually chosen as the director for the next feature film to be produced by AVM Productions. The project was originally titled as Police Ravi but in August 2008 it was re-titled as Vettaikkaaran, taken from the 1964 film of the same name starring M. G. Ramachandran.

Vettaikaran was formally launched the next month. The film's director Babusivan, producers M. Balasubramaniam and B. Gurunath Meyyappan, Vijay and his wife, Vijay Antony, S. A. Chandrasekhar and director Dharani were present at the film's inauguration.

Casting

Perarasu and Hari were mentioned for the project, but AVM Productions chose B. Babusivan as the director of the film. Anushka Shetty was selected as lead female role opposite to Vijay for the very first time. Cinematographer Gopinath was chosen to be the lead cameraman in the film after Ravi Varman was dropped from the film. V. T. Vijayan was signed as the film's editor.

Filming

Vijay experimented with his look in two songs. In "Karigalan", the left half of his body is a man where the right half is a female. The song is also notable for featuring Vijay without a moustache in his career as of date. The look in Karigalan was suggested by Dinesh after he watched Aamir Khan in a Tata Sky advertisement. In "Oru Chinna Thamarai", Vijay sports a long hair wig. Regarding his long hair look, Vijay reveals that he "always wanted to" try long hair.

Soundtrack

Soundtrack was composed by Vijay Antony and met with a positive response.

Release

Critical reception

Sify gave the film a 4/5 star rating, and wrote the "major plus for the movie are the five peppy songs tuned by Vijay Antony which are choreographed well ... The action scenes by Kanal Kannan are superbly choreographed. Gopinath’s camera is slick and editing is fast-paced". Behindwoods rated 4/5 and stated "The charismatic screen presence of Vijay, enjoyable musical tracks, sparkling stunts, fiery punch lines, the signature lighter moments and foot tapping numbers, makes the movie entertain the family audience, and stated that director B. Babusivan had made a wholesome family entertainer movie. The Times of India gave 3.5 stars out of 5 criticising Babusivan for failing to properly tell the story in the second half. Ananda Vikatan rated the film 38 out of 100.