Unnaipol Oruvan (2009 film)
Unnaipol Oruvan is a 2009 Indian Tamil-language thriller film directed by Chakri Toleti in his directorial debut. It stars Mohanlal and Kamal Haasan in the lead roles. The film was simultaneously made in Telugu as Eenadu with Venkatesh playing Mohanlal's role. Both are remakes of the 2008 Hindi film A Wednesday!. Set in Chennai and Hyderabad in the Tamil and Telugu versions respectively, the story depicts the confrontation between an anonymous caller who has planted bombs in the city and wants four terrorists to be released, and a police commissioner who tries to hunt him down.
Released on 18 September 2009, both Unnaipol Oruvan and Eenadu received positive reviews from critics and were commercially successful. The film marked Mohanlal's return to Tamil cinema in a lead role after Pop Carn. Unnaipol Oruvan has attained a cult following throughout the decade and is considered as one of the best investigation thriller films in Tamil cinema.
Plot
D.I.G Govindan Raghavan Maarar, the recently dismissed Commissioner of Police of Chennai, describes in a voice-over about his sudden termination from the police, due to a common man who walked into his life. An unnamed man is shown strategically placing a travel bag on a train at the city's Central railway station and in a shopping mall. He then proceeds to place another bag, under the pretense of lodging an FIR, in the toilet of a police station in Anna Salai, Chennai, and then arrives on the rooftop of an under-construction building and sets up his base of operations, equipped with gadgets and instruments.The caller calls up the Commissioner and informs him that five bombs have been planted in locations throughout city, which are programmed to explode simultaneously within 4 hours. The caller demands that he would like to negotiate with a senior government official, who has the full authority. Commissioner seeks the services of the chief secretary to act as the negotiator and 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, who later tips off news reporter Natasha Rajkumar, telling her to reach Anna Salai police station immediately. The Commissioner initially suspects the 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 three minutes left. They manage to deactivate the bomb after following the caller's instructions. Natasha reaches the scene on the caller's instructions and reports about the situation. An intense debate ensues between the Commissioner and the chief secretary on who would act as the negotiator with the caller. The chief secretary appoints Commissioner as the State's negotiator with unrestricted power for few hours. The caller sequentially calls and taunts the Commissioner, probing him for his views on religion and philosophy, and finally asks the State to release three terrorists and one convicted arms seller, all who were arrested by Commissioner years ago. Commissioner's men realise 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 equipment useless and prompting them to employ the services of a young hacker, an IIT drop-out.
In the meantime, the Commissioner is 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, but much of the time passes without any concrete results on the identity or the location of the caller. Ultimately, Commissioner agrees with the caller's demand and puts two of his best men, Arif Khan and Sethuraman, in charge of handing over the four terrorists at the Sholavaram airstrip. Once there, the caller confirms the identity of the four men via a conference call with Arif and the Commissioner. He 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 terrorist 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 Abdullah and starts walking away. The other three enter a car which explodes soon after, killing them, but the caller knows that Abdullah is alive, and threatens to blow up the remaining bombs across the city unless Arif and Sethu kill Abdullah. The Chief Secretary tells the Commissioner that the CM has to know about the current situation but the Commissioner disagrees and tells her that he will face the consequences, and orders Arif to kill the terrorist. Arif kills Abdullah and Sethu shoots Arif in the hand to make it look like an attack for self-defense. The caller confirms it via the news and reveals that he was bluffing and there are no more bombs anywhere in Chennai. He tells that as terrorism is instant, justice and safety must be so. Then the Commissioner questions the IIT hacker to trace the caller, but he refuses.
The Commissioner looks in the hacker's computer, discovers the location, and leaves abruptly towards the site. The caller, meanwhile, destroys all of his gadgets with a mini bomb inside a drum. As he leaves his hideout with all his camouflage, the Commissioner catches up to him. Both shake hands; in a voiceover, Commissioner says the caller told him his real name but does not reveal it as it does not have any significance. He adds that the higher most officials saved themselves by framing him as a recluse and the CM fired him. Commissioner admits that they all knew the caller 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 records but only in the memories of those who actually witnessed it. Commissioner acknowledges that although the incident has ambiguous moral significance, he personally feels that whatever happened, happened for the best and he walked away.
Production
The film is the directorial debut of Chakri Toleti. The title Unnaipol Oruvan was derived from a novel by Jayakanthan. The project was first reported in February 2009, and started filming that April The film, a Tamil-Telugu bilingual, stars Kamal Haasan in both versions, with Mohanlal appearing only in Tamil and Venkatesh in Telugu. It was shot with a Red One camera.Themes
According to Kamal Haasan, Unnaipol Oruvan portrays the "common man's anger, angst and suffering". The British Board of Film Classification noted the film had a vigilante theme, as a character placed lives under threat and murdered convicts because of a lack of faith in the justice system.Soundtrack
The music was composed by Shruti Haasan in her debut as a music composer. The album contains four songs and a remix. The audio launch was held on 6 September 2009 at Sathyam Cinemas.; Tamil Track List
; Telugu Track List