Nayak: The Real Hero

Nayak
File:Nayak poster.jpg
Directed by	S. Shankar
Written by	S. Shankar Anurag Kashyap
Produced by	A.M. Rathnam
Starring	Anil Kapoor Rani Mukerji Amrish Puri Paresh Rawal Johnny Lever Saurabh Shukla
Cinematography	K. V. Anand
Edited by	B. Lenin V. T. Vijayan
Music by	A. R. Rahman
Production company	Sri Surya Films
Distributed by	Sri Surya Films
Release date	September 7, 2001 (2001-09-07)
Running time	181 minutes
Country	India
Language	Hindi
Budget	₹25 crore (US$3.0 million)
Box office	₹14.25 crore (US$1.7 million)

Nayak: The Real Hero is a 2001 Indian movie starring Anil Kapoor and Rani Mukerji. It was directed by S. Shankar. The film is a remake of S. Shankar's earlier released Tamil film Mudhalvan (1999). The film's score and soundtrack, composed by A. R. Rahman, were dubbed from Mudhalvan into Hindi for the film. It was critically acclaimed, although it could not do big business and gained Below Average verdict in India. Over the years, it has been considered an underrated film with superb performances by Anil Kapoor and Paresh Rawal.

It was one of the high budget movies of its time, to be shot completely in India.

Plot

The plot focuses on the protagonist, Shivaji Rao (Anil Kapoor). He happens to be an ambitious TV cameraman, working for “Q TV” along with his friend Topi (Johnny Lever). While on the job, Rao records a conversation in which the Chief Minister Balraj Chauhan (Amrish Puri), takes an indifferent stand during riots triggered by a fight between some college students and bus drivers, so as not to lose his voter base. Due to police inaction, there is loss of life and damage to property. To explain his actions, Chauhan later agrees to a live interview with Shivaji, during the course of which Rao raises these issues and airs the Chief Minister's stand he had caught on tape.

In response to Shivaji's allegations about the mismanagement by his government, Chauhan redirects the question by instead talking about how difficult his job is due to red tape and bureaucracy, and challenges Shivaji to be the CM for a day and experience those problems himself. Shivaji reluctantly accepts the challenge to prove Chuhan wrong. Educated and vigilant, Shivaji takes care of issues that affect the populace everyday, giving the slum their rightful apartments, getting jobs for the unemployed, suspending inefficient and corrupt government officers. He is assisted by the secretary, Bansal (Paresh Rawal) who serves as a side kick. As the last act of the day, Rao gets Chauhan arrested as he is the root cause of all the corruption. Later, Chauhan bails out, and passes an ordinance to nullify all orders passed by Shivaji when he was the CM. Taking Shivaji's success as an insult, Chauhan sends hitmen to get him killed and destroys his house on false grounds.

Meanwhile Shivaji falls in love with Manjali (Rani Mukherjee), a naive and carefree villager. When Rao asks her father (Shivaji Satam) her hand in marriage, he refuses on grounds that Rao is not employed by the government. After his tenure as a one-day CM he starts preparing for the Indian Civil Service Examination to win Manjaris hand in marriage. However, Bansal shows up and tells him that Shivaji's popularity has rocketed sky-high and people want him to become the next CM of the state. He is reluctant at first, but when Chauhan's henchmen vandalize Q TV premises to intimidate him, and the people show their support by thronging to his place in huge numbers, he agrees to take part in the elections.

In the ensuing state elections, he wins by a vast majority. But Manjali’s father, angered by Shivaji's decision, refuses to let his daughter marry him. Here, Chauhan’s political allies desert him causing his defeat. On becoming the chief minister, Shivaji brings about lots of improvements and quickly becomes an idol in the people’s eyes. However his growing popularity is threatened continuously by Chauhan who uses his henchmen to kill him or at least tarnish is image as a public hero. But Shivaji promptly answers by digging out all accusations against Chauhan and his allies. This, however, causes a reunion of Chauhan and his allies. After a failed attempt on Shivaji's life by hiring an assassin, a bomb is detonated at his home killing his parents.

In the final attempt Chauhan orders his P.A. to destroy law and order and cause bomb explosions in various parts of the city. But a priest is able to overhear a few men planning to detonate bombs. He immediately notifies Shivaji's office via the "Complaint Box" department. Chauhan's P.A. is arrested and under tactical inquiry by Shivaji and his secretary, he discloses the location of the 4 bombs. A Bomb Squad is able to defuse 3 bombs, but the 4th one explodes before they could reach to it. Chauhan, however, uses this success against Shivaji by blaming the young CM for the bomb. Seeing no way out, Shivaji summons Chauhan to the secretariat and creates a situation such that it would seem as if Chauhan was there to shoot Shivaji but failed. Shivaji takes up a gun, but pointing it to his arm shoots himself, and then hands over the gun to Chauhan. Now getting to know that Shivaji had set a trap, an enraged Chauhan attempts to shoot Shivaji, but his shot misses. The security guards then shoot down Chauhan killing him. Shivaji, secretly tells Bansal the truth and says that "finally they have turned me into a politician too" but Bansal believes that Chauhan deserved death saying "he instituted politics for a long time for corruption and evil; you did it only once for good" . Manjali's father also comes to realize that Shivaji is in fact a great man who sees duty before everything else and allows Manjali to marry him.

In the end, the city develops under the governance of Shivaji Rao and his colleagues. The complaint box, where people were supposed to fill in their complaints and information about various threats anonymously, is shown to be empty, signifying that the reasons to be afraid have been taken care of.

Cast

• Anil Kapoor as Shivaji Rao
• Rani Mukerji as Manjali
• Amrish Puri as Chief Minister Balraj Chauhan
• Paresh Rawal as Bansal
• Pooja Batra as Laila
• Saurabh Shukla as Pandurang
• Shivaji Satam as Manjari's Father
• Johnny Lever as Topi
• Sushmita Sen in Special Appearance.

Crew

• Director - S. Shankar
• Producer - A.M. Rathnam
• Dialogues - Anurag Kashyap
• Story & Screenplay - S. Shankar
• Music - A.R. Rahman
• Cinematography - K.V. Anand
• Editor - B. Lenin - V. T. Vijayan
• Art - Thotta Tharani
• Lyrics - Anand Bakshi
• Choreographer - Raju Sundaram, Ahmed Khan
• Stunts - Kanal Kannan
• Co-Director - Vijayakumar Raichurs
• Associate Directors - B. Chintu Mohapatra, Raj Acharya
• Assistant Directors - Muthu Vadugu, G. Anandha Narayanan, K.R.Mathivanan, K. Balachery
• Visual Effects - Pentamedia Graphics (P) Ltd., Cytura (Florida, USA)
• Costumes - Manish Malhotra, Nalini Sriram, Shefali (Sushmita Sen), Rohit Bal (Saiyaan Song)
• Make-up - K.M.Sarathkumar, Deepak Chauhan (Anil Kapoor), Rajesh (Rani Mukherjee, Govinda Mehta (Amrish Puri)
• Sound Design - H. Sridhar
• Sound Effects - C. Sethu, Balu
• Songs Recording - H. Sridhar, A. Sivakumar
• Processing - Prasad Colour Lab
• Banner - Sri Surya Movies

Critical acclaim

It was critically acclaimed, although it could not do big business. Overtime, it has been considered an underrated film with superb performances by Anil Kapoor and Paresh Rawal.

Trivia

The protagonist's character name "Shivaji Rao" was specially named after Tamil Superstar Rajinikanth's real name. This was because the lead role was initially written with Rajinikanth in mind for the original Tamil version, however, his refusal led to Shankar later signing on Arjun and he had interestingly retained the character's name in the Hindi version.

Boxoffice

Nayak was declared "Below average" by BoxOfficeIndia and IBOS Network due to high budget and distribution price.In UK,Nayak grossed £83,496 during its theatrical run.

Soundtrack

Untitled

The soundtrack for the film was composed by A.R.Rahman. He reused all the songs except "Mudhalvane" song, from the original film Mudhalvan. A new track "Saiyyan" was added. The track "Shakalaka Baby" was reused in the musical Bombay Dreams also. The lyrics for the pretuned songs were written by veteran poet Anand Bakshi and this was one of his last films before he died in 2002.

The audio rights were bought by T-Series for ₹ 6 crore and released on July 4, 2001. Comparing with the Tamil version which was a massive success, the album did only an average business.

#	Song	Singer(s)
1	"Chalo Chale Mitwa"	Udit Narayan, Kavita Krishnamurthy, Swarnalatha
2	"Saiyyan"	Sunidhi Chauhan, Hans Raj Hans
3	"Chalo Chale Purva"	Udit Narayan, Kavita Krishnamurthy
4	"Ruki Sukhi Roti"	Shankar Mahadevan, Alka Yagnik
5	"Shakalaka Baby"	Vasundhara Das, Praveen Mani, Shiraz Uppal
6	"Tu Accha Lagta Hain"	Hariharan, Kavita Krishnamurthy
7	"Chidiya Tu Hoti Toh"	Abhijeet,Sanjeevani

External links

• Nayak: The Real Hero at IMDb