During the making of Pudhiya Mannargal, Vikram was approached by Mani Ratnam to star in Bombay. However, Vikram had grown his hair long and had a beard for Pudhiya Mannargal, and could not change his appearance to accept Ratnam's offer.
K. Vijiyan of New Straits Times wrote "Nothing much in this movie but a controversial idea". The film did not perform well commercially, with Sudhish Kamath noting, "The problem with it: the same old cliches of commercial cinema — the film was ridden with stereotypes, predictable incidentstriggered by unidimensional screen villains".