Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu (2006 film)

Vettaiyadu Vilaiyaadu
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Gautham Vasudev Menon
Written by	Gautham Vasudev Menon
Produced by	Manickam Narayanan
Starring	Kamal Haasan Jyothika Kamalini Mukherjee Prakash Raj Daniel Balaji Salim Baig
Cinematography	Ravi Varman
Edited by	Anthony
Music by	Harris Jayaraj
Production company	Seventh Channel Communications
Release date	25 August 2006 (2006-08-25)
Running time	174 minutes
Country	India
Language	Tamil
Budget	₹24 crore[1]
Box office	₹65 crore[1]

Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu (transl. Hunt and Play) is a 2006 Indian Tamil-language neo-noir action thriller film written and directed by Gautham Menon. The film stars Kamal Haasan, Jyothika, and Kamalinee Mukherjee in prominent roles, while Prakash Raj, Daniel Balaji, and Salim Baig played supporting roles. The music was composed by Harris Jayaraj with cinematography being handled by Ravi Varman and editing done by Anthony.^[2][3] The film is also one of the first Indian films to be made using Super 35.

Kamal Haasan won the Tamil Nadu State Film Award for Best Actor. Jyothika was nominated for the Best Actress category at the Filmfare Awards for her character Aradhana.^[4][5]

The film was released on 25 August 2006 to positive reviews and became a blockbuster at box office.^[6] It also released in Telugu as Raghavan and in Hindi as The Smart Hunt.^[7]

Plot[]

Rani (Bidushi Dash Barde),^[8] the daughter of former Tirunelveli Superintendent Arokiya Raj IPS (Prakash Raj), tells her father over the phone that she will be back home in Madurai in three hours. As Rani leaves the telephone booth, she is approached by someone she knows, and she does not come home. The following morning, Arokiya Raj finds Rani's finger hanging at his door.

Arokiya Raj calls the DCP in Chennai Crime Branch, Raghavan IPS (Kamal Haasan), his ex-colleague and friend from Chennai, to help in the investigation of Rani's disappearance. Raghavan finds Rani's body within 12 hours, buried in the outskirts of Madurai. The coroner's report states that the killer bisected Rani's body with a surgical knife, proving that the murderer has a strong medical background and that he also savagely raped her before killing her. Without any solid clues, the case is left open. Six months following the trauma of losing their only daughter, Arokiya Raj and his wife Chithra (Rajashree) move to New York City to get away from the pain of losing Rani, and Rani's wish was to do her MS there.

Three months later, Raghavan learns that both Arokiya Raj and Chithra have been brutally murdered in New York. Collaborating with the New York City Police Department (NYPD), Raghavan leaves for New York to represent the Indian police (IPS). On the flight, he reminisces about his late wife Kayalvizhi (Kamalinee Mukherjee), who was abducted by a local gang in an attempt to get to him and fell to her death, so he killed the gangleader who escaped captivity as revenge.

Once in New York, he begins his investigation with NYPD detective Anderson (Lev Gorn). Raghavan stays at a hotel in downtown New York, where he constantly keeps his superiors in Chennai updated on the investigation. At the hotel, he meets his neighbour Aradhana (Jyothika), an NRI. He immediately notices that she is going through a rough patch in her life and one night, worried about her safety, he breaks into her room, only to find her attempting suicide by asphyxiation. He saves her life and the two strike a friendship. Aradhana reveals that her violent husband Arun (Yog Japee) is filing for divorce after cheating on her.

Meanwhile, Raghavan and Anderson find a connection between Rani's murder in Madurai and a two-year-old unsolved disappearance of an Indian American girl named Chandana, whose finger was also possibly found hanging in her boyfriend Hitesh's car. Raghavan's instinct leads them to Chandana's body in a restricted area in the suburbs, found along with three other American women, raped and murdered in a similar manner. After narrowing down their suspects using flight records, their suspicion falls onto two Indian doctors who studied in Brooklyn Medical University: Amudhan Sukumaran (Daniel Balaji) and Ilamaaran Aanandhan (Salim Baig) who are secretly in a homosexual relationship. The scene then shifts to them as they rape and murder their former professor, Veronica, along with two officers in the same area where Raghavan set them on surveillance, then leave her body there.

Raghavan and Anderson visit Amudhan and Ilamaaran's apartment to question them, only to find it unoccupied. Raghavan and Anderson break into the apartment and find pictures of the victims and the murder weapons, thus cracking their case. Before they can call for backup, Ilamaaran arrives and kills Anderson with a gun. Angered, Raghavan hits him and then Ilamaaran becomes unconscious. After few minutes, Raghavan gets injured by Amudhan with a surgical knife. In order to buy time, Raghavan asks Amudhan why such intelligent young men like them would succumb to such psychopathic acts.

Amudhan explains that they had developed a habit of killing from childhood itself, starting with pushing a classmate from a train at age 13, to raping and murdering their high school teacher at age 17. He says that he and Amudhan stopped this activity once they joined MBBS at Rani's college. He claims that he managed to keep his violent urges under control for three years, but when he saw Rani, he tried to rape her. Rani escaped, and two days later Arokiyaraj assaulted the duo outside in a movie theatre. He and Ilamaaran were locked up in a local station for the rest of the night. The inspector on duty, Kumar, neglected to interrogate them and tortured them heavily, even setting them up with a eunuch who inadvertently but severely molested them. Albeit thirsty for revenge, both of them left for New York to pursue their higher studies in Surgery and went on to abduct, rape and kill many local young women. On their trip to India, they met, raped and killed Rani and returned to the States. Once they found out that Arokiya Raj and his wife had moved to New York, they studied their residence and killed them too. Thinking that Raghavan will be dead in minutes due to his lung injuries, they set their apartment on fire and take the next flight to Mumbai, to escape the NYPD.

Raghavan makes it out alive by jumping out the window and is hospitalized with severe injuries. Aradhana takes care of him, and their bond grows stronger. 4 weeks later, Raghavan and Aradhana return to Chennai together. During their flight, Aradhana explains that she has a daughter who is living with her parents in Chennai, and upon realization she feels guilty for being selfish and wanting to commit suicide. She states that she will be taking her daughter and mom back to New York in 2 weeks to start her job. As they wait in line for customs, Raghavan proposes to Aradhana, but she refuses, saying that she is not ready for another relationship, having just finalized her divorce, and wishes to focus on being a good mother to her daughter.

Amudhan and Ilamaran, evade the Mumbai police at Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport and finally reach Chennai, leaving a trail of bodies in their path. Hence, Raghavan issues a state-wide hunt for them and the dean of their medical college revokes their degrees, thus beginning their rampage. After seeing Aradhana with Raghavan, Amudhan kidnaps her for Ilamaran's lust, while Ilamaaran tries to get into Raghavan's house to kill him. When the cops arrive, Ilamaaran attempts to flee but is caught by Raghavan after a chase and fight. He comes to realize that Amudhan and Ilamaaran are in an intimate relationship. Trying to negotiate Ilamaaran's freedom for Aradhana's, Raghavan agrees to meet with Amudhan; on the other hand, Amudhan decides to outright bury Aradhana alive after realizing their hypocrisy. The final altercation results in Raghavan killing both Amudhan and Ilamaaran and rescuing Aradhana. The film ends with the marriage between Raghavan and Aradhana.

Cast[]

Production[]

In 2005, Gautham Menon planned to make a film in Malayalam (which eventually became Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu) and approached Mohanlal after finishing the script, but nothing materialised.^[9] Kamal Haasan had agreed to make a film for producer Kaja Mohideen of Roja Combines, and the pair discussed signing Menon to be the film's director after they were impressed with his work in Kaakha Kaakha (2003). Menon first discussed the script of Pachaikili Muthucharam (2007) with Kamal Haasan, and the actor asked him to develop it into a script within forty days. However, he later had second thoughts and asked Menon for a different script to collaborate on. Menon was keen to make a trilogy of cop films, much like Ram Gopal Varma's trilogy of gangster films, and subsequently planned Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu as the second in the series after Kaakha Kaakha. The film narrated another episode from a police officer's life, that of an Indian cop who moves to America to investigate the case of psychotic serial killers before returning to pursue the chase in India.^[10] As per Menon's usual method for picking a title, he asked his associates for suggestions, which included the title of Thadayaara Thaaka, which was later used for another film.^[11] An early working title for the film was Sippai.^[12]

The film began production in August 2005 in Chennai, with Ravi Varman signed as the cinematographer.^[13] Towards the start of the shoot, producer Kaja Mohideen ran into financial troubles and subsequently attempted suicide. As a result, Kamal Haasan wanted to quit the project but Menon convinced him to stay on as they had taken advance payments.^[14] Ravichandran of Oscar Films stepped in and spent 90 lakhs on the film, before also suddenly withdrawing from the project within fifteen days. In order not to waste dates, Menon personally funded a schedule in Mumbai featuring Kamal Haasan and Jyothika and spent 80 lakhs. Menon revealed that unlike Kamal Haasan's other films, the actor did not want to take control of the script or production. Angered by the delays of the film, he kept to himself and made minimal suggestions barring to change some dialogues on location.^[10] The film however had gone through changes from the original script, with less emphasis on the antagonists than Menon had hoped, and he also revealed that scenes for songs were forced and shot without him.^[15]

For the American schedule, Manickam Narayanan took over as a producer and made the film on a "first-copy" basis. Subsequently, fifty per cent of the film was shot in New York City, where shooting lasted for a month. Menon had planned to shoot more scenes in the city, including a car chase sequence, but the change of producer delayed the schedule and cold weather elongated the team's stay and increased costs.^[10][16][17] Actresses Rohini and Andrea Jeremiah dubbed for the voices of female leads Jyothika and Kamalinee Mukherjee respectively.^[18][19] Menon worked on the post-production of the film in May 2006, while he was simultaneously filming Pachaikili Muthucharam (2007).^[10]

Themes and influences[]

Like in Kaakha Kaakha, Menon wanted the script to feature sequences where that the cop's personal life gets involved and affected in the course of the investigation.^[10]

Music[]

Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu
Soundtrack album by Harris Jayaraj
Released	21 June 2006 (21 June 2006)
Recorded	2006
Genre	Feature film soundtrack
Length	26:57
Language	Tamil
Label	Ayngaran Music An Ak Audio Hit Musics
Producer	Harris Jayaraj
Harris Jayaraj chronology
Ghajini (2005) Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu (2006) Sainikudu (2006)
External audio Audio Jukebox (Tamil) on YouTube

The soundtrack of the film consists of five songs composed by Harris Jayaraj. It marks Jayaraj's first and only collaboration with Kamal Haasan.

All tracks are written by Thamarai.

No.	Title	Singer(s)	Length
1.	"Karka Karka"	Devan Ekambaram, Tippu, Nakul, Andrea Jeremiah	4:54
2.	"Partha Mudhal"	Bombay Jayashree, Unni Menon	6:06
3.	"Manjal Veyil"	Hariharan, Krish, Nakul	5:54
4.	"Uyirile"	Mahalakshmi Iyer, Srinivas	5:13
5.	"Neruppe"	Franko, Solar Sai, Sowmya Raoh	4:50
Total length:			26:57

Raghavan
Soundtrack album by Harris Jayaraj
Released	14 July 2006 (14 July 2006)
Recorded	2006
Genre	Feature film soundtrack
Length	26:40
Language	Telugu
Label	Aditya Music
Producer	Harris Jayaraj
External audio Audio Jukebox (Telugu) on YouTube

All tracks are written by Veturi Sundararama Murthy.

No.	Title	Singer(s)	Length
1.	"Katthi Doosthe"	Devan Ekambaram, Tippu, Nakul, Andrea Jeremiah	4:49
2.	"Baanam Vesaadey"	Bombay Jayashree, Harish Raghavendra	6:02
3.	"Vennelave (Paccha Velugu)"	Karthik, Krish, Nakul	5:53
4.	"Hrudayame"	Mahalakshmi Iyer, Srinivas	5:08
5.	"Merupe"	Franko, Solar Sai, Sowmya Raoh	4:48
6.	"Maaya Modhalaaye (Unreleased/Theatrical version)"	Bombay Jayashree, Harish Raghavendra	5:46
Total length:			26:40

Critical response[]

Behindwoods wrote a positive review, stating: "The album has not let down expectations. It is the usual mix by Harris. However, Bombay Jeyashree's contribution and the beautiful lyrics by poetess Thamarai are the greatest assets to the album. Harris once again proves his mastery in orchestration and the audio will surely be a hit like Minnale or Kaakha Kaakha."^[20]

Release and reception[]

Critical response[]

Baradwaj Rangan summarised it in his review: "The story of a police investigation is detailed in a smart, grown-up movie that gets most things right." He praised the film for "giving us a sense of a day in the life of a cop as if an invisible crew followed him around as he went about his job." He lavished heavy praise on Gautham Menon for the mature handling of the relationship between the lead pair, saying, "Gautham continues to dream up for Jyotika parts that no one's imagined her in before, and she contributes to the kind of mature romantic angle we’ve rarely seen before. It’s not just about boy meeting girl and falling in love; it's about a boy with baggage meeting girl with bigger baggage and tentatively exploring the practicality of a new relationship after their respective old ones have faded away."^[4] Behindwoods said, "It is definitely a triumph of sorts for Gautham and Manickam Narayanan, who have gone through innumerable hitches in getting the movie released. Enjoy!!"^[21] Rediff gave it 3.5/5, saying "In his best performance in recent times, Kamal portrays the character with believable honesty and charm."^[22] Sify stated that "what gives you goose flesh is the finely calibrated performance of Kamal as DCP Raghavan. You just can’t take your eyes off him as he laces his portrayal with dignity, grace and dry wit."^[23]

Box office[]

Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu emerged the biggest Tamil blockbuster of the year grossing a total of ₹500 million worldwide.^[1] This was the first Tamil film to be released in 16 theatres in Chennai city alone and changed the trend of film release.^[24]

Accolades[]

Tamil Nadu State Film Awards

• Best Actor – Kamal Haasan
• Best Cinematographer – Ravi Varman

Film Fans Association Award^[25]

• Best Actor – Kamal Haasan
• Best Director – Gautham Menon
• Best Music Director – Harris Jayaraj
• Best Playback Singer – Unni Menon
• Best Cinematographer – Ravi Varman

Filmfare Awards South

• Best Actor – Kamal Haasan (Nominated)
• Best Actress – Jyothika (Nominated)
• Best Music Director – Harris Jayaraj (Nominated)

References[]

External links[]

• Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu at IMDb