Arun (Ramesh Arvind) is married to Leelavathi (Kalpana) in a resigned marriage. He is embarrassed by his wife's plain looks and her weight. When he meets Priya (Heera Rajagopal)- a real estate agent, he omits to tell her he is married and has an affair with her.
When he takes Priya with him on a vacation to Bangalore, he bumps into his old friend Dr. Sakthivel Gounder (Kamal Haasan)- an orthopedic surgeon from Coimbatore who is also in Bangalore with his wife Palani (Kovai Sarala) and his son Anand - travelling with him in the same flight and even staying in the same hotel. Sakthivel is called to Arun's room in the night - as Arun has slipped his disc and the hotel doctor is unavailable - and bumps into Priya thus finding out about the affair.
After returning to Chennai, Priya finds out that Arun is married but decides to continue with him when Arun says he was forced into marriage and promises to divorce his wife. When Arun's wife Leelavathi discovers Arun's affair, she has a huge showdown which leads to Arun leaving the house.
Thus begins the titular action of 'Sathi' meaning to concoct plans for an enemy's downfall. Leelavathi's various methods of making her husband understand the true values of life, marriage and fidelity, with the hilarious aid of Dr Sakthivel Gounder forms the crux of the story.
Interestingly, the word 'Sathi' is sometimes used in the hindu religion to describe a devoted wife.
Ramachandramoorthy or Ram.C.M alias Ram (Kamal Haasan) is a pilot based in Canada and an irredeemable skirt-chaser. In course of a midair hijack situation, he meets Mythili (Simran). Mythiil and Ram thwart the hijack and save the plane.
They fall in love and get married. After marriage Ram quits his playboy character and remain faithful to his wife. Ram's four closest buddies Ayyappan Nair (Jayaram), Vedantham (Vedham) Iyer (Yugi Sethu), Ganesh Hegde (Ramesh Aravind) and Hanumanth Reddy (Sriman) are present at the wedding — minus their wives. One day, when Ram helps Nirmala (Devayani) (Ganesh Hegde's ex-lover who tries to suicide since Ganesh Hegde marries his relative due to parents' complusion) from abstaining her from suicide, Mythili misinterprets and presumes that he is two-timing her, and flies off to India to her parents' home. And Ram goes chasing after. Further misunderstanding occurs when he goes to meet Mythilli, drunk and in the middle of the night goes to another house downstairs of Mythili's house.
To take his mind off Mythili for a while, his four friends drive him down to Bangalore and fix him up in a room, complete with call girl Maragadavalli alias Maggi (Ramya Krishnan). Ram won't have any of it. He gets into a fight with Maggi, then dashes over to his friends' room. To salvage the situation, Iyer hurries off to Ram's room and finds Maggi dead. Panicking, Nair, Iyer, Hegde and Reddy decide to get rid of the body in spite of Ram’s pleas to call the police. They manage to roll the dead body in a blanket and carry it over to their car. A mysterious ‘Sardar’ (Ramesh Khanna) watches over this. The friends dispose of the body in a dry river and drive over to Chennai to lead their normal lives.
Ram discovers a cache of diamonds inside the dead girl's cell phone and spoils the plans of the Sardar to steal them. Meanwhile, Mythili is goaded by her parents to give Ram one more chance and she arrives at Ram’s house. In the tussle with the Sardar, Ram removes the Sardars hat and mythili mistakes the Sardars long hair for a girl and leaves Ram once again. The Sardar manages to escape.
The friends get very nervous when they learn of a news article regarding the discovery of a dead body in the same area that they disposed off their dead body. A traditional festival (Ugadhi) has the wives of the four friends plan a party. While planning, Mythili overhears a conversation among them regarding their husband’s friends Ram’s fight with a Sardar and how his wife thought that it was a girl he was having an affair with. Mythili reveals her identity to the wives and gets invited to the party to be rejoined with Ram.
As everyone is present in the party, a twist comes when the supposedly 'dead Maggi' lands up, demanding her diamonds back. She then reveals the truth. The diamonds belongs to her diamond smuggling boss (Manivannan) and she had stolen it from him. She saw an opportunity to make everyone believe she is dead when Ram’s friend mistakes ketchup to be blood and thinks that she was dead. The dead body belonged is of her boss's girlfriend that she killed and managed to get into the blanket when the friends weren’t looking.
Ram with help from his friends, and the Sardar, who happens to be an undercover police officer trying to find the diamonds, saves everyone from Maggi and her boss. Mythilli, promises to change her over suspicious ways and both get back together. The movie ends with Ram asking if he could get the same attention his son is getting.
Originally Krishnamachari Srikkanth was supposed to essay the role later played by Yuhi Sethu, but dropped out. Sethu signed on revealing that Kamal Haasan had approached him to be a part of his two previous films, Thenali and Pammal K. Sambandam too, which he did not take up.[3] Sriman was signed after appearing alongside Kamal Haasan inPammal K. Sambandam, with which the latter was impressed.
The film started shoot in February 2002 and shot in Canada for seventeen days.[4] In April 2002, Kamal Haasan was prevented from boarding a Los Angeles-bound flight in Torontoduring the making of the film, with the security preventing him from passing due to his Islamic-sounding surname.[5] The period of shoot also coincided with the death of Simran's cousin Monal, with Simran choosing to remain on sets in Canada rather than fly back to be with her family.[6] In June 2002, the five friends in the film along with Deva took part in a promotional tour to publicise the soundtrack in Bangalore.[7] The film faced trouble during censorship and parts of a song featuring Ramya Krishnan were subsequently cut, giving the film a U/A (Parental Guidance) rating.[8] Hence the film was delayed for two weeks after an original planned release date of June 14, 2002.[9]
The film opened to positive reviews from critics, with the critic from The Hindu citing that Crazy Mohan's dialogue was "the mainstay", describing the film as "completely entertaining". The reviewer also praised the film's performances claiming that "with suitable slapstick, apt body language and timing and modulation that tickle, the veteran (Kamal Haasan) makes a mark yet again."[10] Similarly, another critic claimed that "Crazy Mohan steals the scenes most of the time with his rib-tickling comedies, one-liners, and sensible timings", giving the film a positive review.[11] Furthermore, reviewers from The Screen dubbed the film as a "clean comic-entertainer", adding that "director KS Ravikumar deserves a pat for weaving out a good screenplay based on Kamal Haasan’s story idea and creating a laugh riot".[12][13]
The film was met with an positive response at the box office, making profits for the producers.[14] Kamal Haasan had distributed the film in the Karnataka region.[8] A sequel to the film was planned and Ravikumar had hoped to film scenes on a cruise liner, but the project failed to take off.[15]
The film was dubbed into Telugu under the title Kshatriya Putrudu. It was later remade into the Hindi filmVirasat (1997) byPriyadarshan and in Kannada as Tandege Takka Maga (2006) by S. Mahendar.
Saktivelu (Kamal Haasan) returns home to his father, Periya Thevar’s (Sivaji Ganesan) village in Tamil Nadu, after completing his education in London. Much to his father’s annoyance, he brings his westernized girlfriend (Gautami) with him to meet his family. Saktivelu plans on opening a chain of restaurants in Chennai which saddens Periya Thevar as he wanted his son to help the villagers with his education.
Periya Thevar is a well respected village chief. His younger brother and his nephew Maya Thevar (Nassar) holds a huge grudge against him over a family feud. Since most of the village is divided into these two brothers faction and as Maya Thevar always tries to one up Periya Thevar, it puts them at loggerheads with each other.
Saktivelu spends time in the village with his girlfriend by re-visiting his childhood memories. They come across an old temple which has been closed off on Maya Thevar’s instructions. He insists on entering and his friend and servant Esaki (Vadivelu) breaks open the lock for them to look around. Maya Thevar hears of this and a brutal riot is started among the two village factions. Periya thevar, in order to quell the situation, contemplates on apologising to his opponents. Sakthivelu feels it should be him or Esaki who should apologise. When Saktivelu asks for esaki, he learns that Maya Thevar has amputated Easki’s hand for opening the temple. In order to prevent further escalation of the situation Saktivelu, with permission from his father, enlists the help of his friends in the government and opens the temple for all legally. Slighted by this, Maya Thevar, hires goons to break a dam protecting a part of the village faction that supports Periya Thevar. Although one of the villagers spots one of the goons near the dam, he doesn’t think much of it.
The dam is damaged by explosives used by the goons which results in flooding of half the village. This results in lots of death including infants which deeply saddens Saktivelu. He spots the goon who placed the explosives again in the village and gives chase. After capturing, he hands the goon over to the police but the goon doesn’t give up Maya Thevar's involvement due to fear for his family’s life.
Later in order to go one up on shakthi, Maya Thevar closes a portion of his land to prevent the public from reaching the mainroad easily. Sakthivelu and his father invite them for talks at village Panchayat. In the village panchayat accusations fly from both sides. With no evidence backing up the truth, Maya Thevar accuses Periya Thevar for orchestrating various attacks on his brother's family. Disrespected and broken, Periya Thevar returns to his home and passes away soon. Saktivelu takes over his father’s duties as the head of the village.
As time passes, this incident dies down. The villagers express concern to Saktivelu about going around a piece of land belonging to Maya Thevar’s side of the village everyday to work in their farm which causes a much longer travelling time. Saktivelu reasons with the owner of the land to open it up for all villagers to pass so that their long commute is shortened. Although understanding and willing, the land owner is afraid of Maya Thevar’s backlash especially since he has a daughter (Revathi). Saktivelu assures his fear by arranging marriage between a well-to-do person from his village to the land owners daughter. Everybody involved happily agrees and the land owner opens up the land for everyone.
On the day of the wedding, the groom runs away fearing Maya-Thevar. The landowner and his daughter are distraught over this claiming that it is a huge disrespect for his family and even if someone marries his daughter, they have to live in constant fear. Saktivelu then gets permission from landowner and weds his daughter. At first, although Saktivelu still has feelings for his girlfriend and his new bride is very shy, they overcome their awkwardness and move on. But soon, his girlfriend comes back and learns the truth. Although sadden, she understands the situation and leaves. Saktivelu, too, closes the chapter about his girlfriend and starts his new life with his wife.
Maya-Thevar, again slighted by the opening of the land, plants bomb in the village festival. This results in a lot of death on both sides of the village. Both factions of the village, wanting revenge, go after Maya-Thevar and his family. Saktivelu protects the innocent family including his uncle and helps them get away from the villagers. Appreciative of Saktivelu’s efforts to protect them, they give away Maya-Thevar's hiding location.
Saktivelu goes to meet Maya-Thevar and asks him to surrender to the police before the villagers kill him. Maya-Thevar’s rabid hate for Saktivelu makes his reject his offer for help. Maya-Thevar blaming Saktivelu for all his problems tries to kill Saktivelu. In the struggle that follows, Saktivelu accidentally kills Maya-Thevar. Although other villagers are willing to take the blame for the kill, Saktivelu gives himself up to the police.
Unnaipol Oruvan (English: Someone Like You) is a 2009 Tamildrama-thriller film directed by debutante Chakri Toleti. The film stars Kamal Haasan and Mohanlal in the lead roles. The film was simultaneously made in Telugu as Eeenadu with Venkateshplaying Mohanlal's role.,[3] both remakes of the Hindi filmA Wednesday! (2008).[4] The film tells the story of a Police Commissioner, who gets an anonymous call. The anonymous caller demands that he release militants in exchange for information about the many bombs planted across Chennai city. The caller is serious as the police find a bomb planted very close to their headquarters. The commissioner is later cornered between releasing militants who had been responsible for killing innocent people and stopping bomb blasts around the city. Whatever he choses, forms the rest of the plot. The film received positive reviews from the critics.
Maraar initially suspects the anonymous caller to be bluffing, but his doubts are dispelled as the caller, to prove his seriousness and the police force's helplessness, reveals that a bomb has been planted in the Anna Salai police station. When the bomb disposal squad find the bomb, there is only 3 minutes left. The common man calls Maraar and tells him the instructions to deactivate the bomb. Based on these, the bomb is defused. Natasha reaches the scene on the caller's instructions and reports about the situation. There is intense debate between Maraar and the Chief Secretary on who would act as the negotiator with the common man. The chief minister does not want to get into this and the Chief Secretary also does not want to take upon the responsibility. Hence, Maraar himself takes on the role of the negotiator with the common man. The common man demands the release of four terrorists, Abdullah, Inayadullah, Ahamadullah and Karamchand Lala, who have been involved in and arrested for many of the major terrorist attacks and activities that have happened in the country during the previous decade.In the opening frame, the recently dismissed Police Commissioner of Chennai I.G Raghavan Maraar (Mohan Lal) standing at the seashore, describes in a voice-over about his termination due to a common man walked into his life and turning everything topsy-turvy. This scene leads into the flashback. An unnamed man (Kamal Haasan) is shown strategically placing a travel bag within a train in the Chennai Central railway station and in a shopping mall. He proceeds to place another bag, under the false pretense of lodging an FIR, in the toilet of a police station located in Anna Salai, Chennai. He then arrives on the rooftop of a building under construction and sets up his base of operations, equipped with various modern technology gadgets and instruments. He calls up Maraar and informs him that 5 bombs have been placed in different locations throughout Chennai, which are programmed to explode simultaneously within four hours. The common man demands that he would like to negotiate with a senior Government official. Maraar seeks the services of the Chief Secretary(Lakshmi) to act as the negotiator. Maraar also alerts his team involved in intelligence research and surveillance, tapping all the available resources in gathering preliminary information and tracing the location of the caller. Meanwhile, the caller tips off television news reporter Natasha Rajkumar (Anuja Iyer), telling her to reach Anna Salai police station immediately as it is going to be "the most important day of her life".
Maraar cleverly uses Natasha to fake a report on live television that four terrorists are being relocated to an undisclosed common site, turning the caller's tool back onto him. Maraar's men find out that the caller is using advanced software to automatically switch the numbers and locations of his mobile phone SIM card every minute, rendering their manpower and the obsolete equipments useless and prompting them to employ the services of a young hacker, who turns out to be an IIT dropout. In the meantime, Maraar is also able to obtain a facial composite of the caller with help of the police officer to whom the caller had approached to lodge the fake FIR during the earlier scenes of the film; but much of the time passes without any concrete results on the identity or the location of the caller. Ultimately, Maraar agrees with the caller's demand and puts two of his best men, Arif Khan (Ganesh Venkatraman) and Sethuraman (Bharath Reddy), in charge of handing over the four terrorists at the Sozhavaram airstrip. Once there, the caller confirms the identity of all the four men via a conference call with Arif and Maraar, and then asks Arif and Sethu to unlock their handcuffs and leave them alone at a particular spot. Sethu orders his men to do as told but at the last moment, Arif decides not to hand over Abdullah to ensure all the information regarding the locations of the bombs can be forced out from the caller. Sethu argues with Arif and demands he do as ordered but Arif forcefully grabs the terrorist and starts walking away.
As they leave behind the remaining three, the caller, unaware of the ongoing fiasco, uses a cell phone placed in a rigged jeep at the spot to detonate an explosion in which all the three terrorists perish. Arif relays this information to Maraar, which is confirmed by the anonymous caller as he reveals that he is just a "stupid common man", not belonging to any terrorist outfit, and his plan was not to free the terrorists but to kill them, avenging all the terrorist attacks they had helped carry out in Coimbatore and other major cities of India, thus "cleaning the roach-infested house". Maraar tries to reason with him and tries to find out his religion, the justification for this action, any personal incidents that prompted him to take such an action etc. The common man narrates an incident of how a Muslim woman was being tortured and molested by communal people. The common man also says that he can take actions for the sufferings meted out to people from other communities too. The caller threatens to blow up the remaining bombs across the city unless Arif and Sethu kill Abdullah. The Chief Secretary (Lakshmi) tells Maraar that the Chief Minister has to know about the Current Situation but Maraar disagrees and tells her that he'll face the consequences, and orders Arif to kill the terrorist. As Natasha reports the scene on television, the young hacker traces the caller's location but refuses to reveal it saying that the caller was actually "brainy", and compared to him, the hacker was only one among the billions. But Maraar looks in the hacker's computer, discovers the location and leaves abruptly towards the site.
The caller calls up Maraar, as he is on the way, for a final time to further reveal that he had not planted any other bomb in the city. At this point, Maraar surprisingly declares he already knew there were no more bombs which makes it clear that his decision to kill the last terrorist wasn't taken in fear but in confidence. Maraar reaches the caller's location just as the latter is leaving the place, having destroyed all his gadgets and equipments, leaving behind no evidence. The two meet briefly when Maraar, identifying the anonymous caller on the basis of the face sketch, offers the man a ride home and introduces himself. Both shake hands, when Maraar's voice-over cuts back as he says the man told him his real name but his name doesn't have any significance. The film ends on an idealistic note, with Maraar admitting that they all knew the common man was disturbed because of the insecure environment and the incompetence of the governing authorities but he never imagined him to go to such lengths and have the guts to do something like that. He also repeats that the facts of this incident cannot be found in any written record but only in the memories of those who actually witnessed it, and acknowledges that although the incidence has ambiguous moral significance, he personally feels that whatever happened, happened for the best.
While Kamal Haasan was cast as the lead role in the film, confirmation of Mohanlal's presence in the film followed. Ganesh Venkatraman, who debuted in the 2008 film Abhiyum Naanum, was later confirmed for a supporting role. Bharath Reddy, who played a cop in the Telugu film Siddam, is playing another supporting cop role.[7]
UTV Motion Pictures distributed the film along with Rajkamal International, Haasan's home production company, which also produced the film. The film was directed by Chakri, a US-based filmmaker and a close friend of Haasan. Chakri had previously played the role of Govind's friend, Sai Ram, in Dasavathaaram, and the role of a child who takes still photographs of Kamal in the 1983 Telugu filmSaagara Sangamam. Neeraj Pandey wrote the film's dialogue and screenplay. The music was composed by Kamal Haasan's daughter, Shruthi Haasan.
The title was changed from Thalaivan Irukkiran to Unnaipol Oruvan in early April 2009.[8] But recent news in 2012 confirms that Thalaivan Irukkiran is a different film altogether, that is touted to be a multistarrer.[9]
Unnaipol Oruvan started its first filming schedule on 6 February 2009. It completed shooting in 65 days.[10] The film was initially set to release on August 12, 2009, since the date coincided with the release of Kamal Haasan’s first film Kalathur Kannamma and his entry into Tamil cinema in 1959, marking 2009 as Haasan's 50th year in cinema. However, owing to technical and administrative difficulties, the film’s release was postponed to September 18.[11] The film was given a U/A (Parental Guidance) rating from the Central Board of Film Certification, mainly because of its theme - terrorism.[12]
The film received largely positive reviews from the critics. Sify said that technically, the film was picture-perfect and that both Kamalahassan and Mohanlal coming together is worth the ticket money. It also mentioned that unlike in the Hindi version where Naseeruddin Shah had an edge over Anupam Kher, here the best dialogues in the film were almost equally given to Mohanlal as well.[5]
Behindwoods rated that overall it was a brilliant work which will be appreciated by every socially responsible citizen of India.[6] Indiaglitz commented that Unnaipol Oruvan deserves to be watched to see how Kamal & Mohanlal pit against Nasser & Kher.[13] Kollywood Today praised that the movie was stupendously awesome and was a must-watch.[14]Pavithra Srinivasan of rediff.com provided 4 stars and also had the same comments.[15]
The music was composed by Shruti Haasan, daughter of Kamal Haasan. The album contains four songs and a remix. The songs are featured throughout the film. Kamal Haasan, singer Blaaze, and Manyusha Puthran contributed the lyrics. The audio launch was held on 6 September 2009 at Sathyam Cinemas. [16]
