Official Thread ▌Theeran Adhigaram Ondru ▌ Karthi Is Back with a Bang - Excellent Reports!

Tamil hero Karthi’s intense cop drama, Khakee, has hit the screens all over today. Meanwhile, the film’s unit arranged a premiere show last night in Chennai where Karthi’s brother hero Suriya was a special invitee.
Thoroughly impressed with the film, Suriya took to Twitter and wrote, “A raw and bold hidden truth coming alive in a film with such an impactful and realistic approach! Kudos to Jangid sir and 300 team members for the 11 plus years of selfless service in this case. Thank you Vinod, Karthi and Dream Warrior pictures for picking this story to showcase yet another brave side of the Police!”.
Khakee is releasing in Tamil as Theeran Adhigaaram Ondru. The film has Rakul Preet as the female lead. H Vinoth has directed the movie and Aditya Music company is releasing it in Telugu.

 

http://www.thehindu.com/entertainme...-theeran-adhigaaram-ondru/article20480107.ece

 

H Vinoth continues to draw from real life for his second film Theeran Adhigaaram Ondru
Director H Vinoth doesn’t mind being called restless. He has worked several jobs before entering cinema, never sticking to one for more than six months. He finds that most jobs offer nothing to new to learn from, beyond the sixth month. “After that, all you’re doing is competing with colleagues there.”

But it took him a year and a half before he quit cinema. The reason he did, however, was the opposite. “There was just too much to learn... too many challenges. It was overwhelming.” He returned to cinema soon, after arguing that it’s a world that’s impossible to leave once you’ve stepped in. He joined director Raju Murugan (Cuckoo, Joker) and found his own voice in the industry, making a film that’s largely inspired from real-life incidents.

Based on a crime

Even Theeran Adhigaaram Ondru, his second after Sathuranga Vettai, is inspired by real life. Based on a sensational and gruesome crime, it’s an idea that kept haunting Vinoth.

“I had worked on a one-liner based on this particular crime long ago. I then kept it aside, as I got busy with Sathuranga Vettai and I’d forgotten about it. Then one day, I had parcelled some food and brought it home, to see that it was packed in a newspaper with the exact same news clipping in it. It was a coincidence, but it took me back to that script and I started reworking it obsessively.”

From a road trip, the script then evolved into a police story. Written specifically for Karthi, he says it worked better that the script is seen from a cop’s perspective rather than a regular person’s.

“It’s easier to write a script based on real life, because we get real, raw scenes that are brimming with drama. For Theeran Adhigaaram Ondru, we had to water down many real moments, because they would have been too violent and the censors wouldn’t have liked it. And then, we also spoil these wonderful moments by adding commercial elements like a love track to it.”

These compromises, he says, are something every director has to live with. Despite giving a hit film, he says the struggle is just the same.

“Earlier, if Sachin scored a hundred, you know his place in the team is cemented for the next 10 matches. But it’s not the same any more and that extends to the film world as well. You may have made a hit film, but you still need a watertight script to get your next chance.”

Scaling up

But things have become better. After a hit, producers “are willing to trust you a bit more and give you a bigger budget. But it’s not like you can take the advance for three films and then start writing them, like what was done earlier.”

His Sathuranga Vettai was filled with compromises; “the final film was just 10% of the original vision.” Initially planned as a film divided into six chapters, with each chapter set within a specific geography, a dialect and a colour tone, much of it had to be compromised due to budget constraints.

“But in your second film, you get a bit more to get closer to your vision. In Theeran Adhigaaram Ondru, I was able to shoot in places where I’d originally planned to, instead of cheating every terrain in Chennai. When that’s the case, you get to experience all that your characters go through.”

It also helped that he’s got a star this time. “If all the people who watched Sathuranga Vettai had actually gone to the theatres, it would have been a much bigger hit. That’s what you need a star for.”

‘Dialogue film’ v/s ‘visual film’

What worked for him in Sathuranga Vettai, he believes, was that it was primarily a ‘dialogue film’. “You may have planned a lot of things for your first film, but most of it gets lost because you hardly get a budget. But that’s not the case when you have good dialogues. A good line connects even if you shoot that in a cheap setting. That’s why 99% of our films work just as well even if we watch it with our eyes closed.”

But he’s quick to argue that visual films are more important. “I know that the great directors are those who make ‘visual’ films. They rely on images to speak more than their dialogues, and I know I haven’t made those kinds of films yet. But directors alone can’t be blamed for that. If the audience had supported at least a few visual films, we would have had dozens of such films and directors here.”