Aadhavan

For the Tamil writer, see Aadhavan Sundaram.

Aadhavan
Directed by	K. S. Ravikumar
Written by	K. S. Ravikumar (dialogue)
Screenplay by	K. S. Ravikumar
Story by	Ramesh Khanna
Produced by	Udhayanidhi Stalin
Starring	Suriya Nayantara Vadivelu Murali B. Saroja Devi Rahul Dev Anand Babu
Cinematography	R. Ganesh
Edited by	Don Max
Music by	Harris Jayaraj
Production company	Red Giant Movies
Distributed by	Red Giant Movies Ayngaran International (UK) FiveStar (Malaysia)
Release date	October 17, 2009 (2009-10-17)
Running time	135 mins
Country	India
Language	Tamil
Budget	₹30 crore (US$3.6 million)

Aadhavan is a 2009 Tamil action thriller, directed by K. S. Ravikumar and written by Ramesh Khanna. The film features Surya Sivakumar in the title role along with Nayantara in lead roles and Murali, Vadivelu, Anand Babu, Ramesh Khanna, B. Saroja Devi, Rahul Dev, Sayaji Shinde in its supporting cast. The music is composed by Harris Jayaraj. The film, was released on October 17, 2009 during Diwali. The film was dubbed into Telugu as Ghatikudu.The film received mixed reviews but became a commercial success.

Plot

The film opens up in the city of Chicago, located in the United States of America with a deal of killing an enemy going between the members of two mafia organizations. They identify the man and find out that he will be visiting Kolkata, India in a week and hire an assassin in the name of Ibrahim Rowther (Sayaji Shinde).

The film then shifts to introducing Tharani (Anand Babu), Rowther's son and his foster brother, Aadhavan (Surya Sivakumar). After helping their father finish the transaction successfully, they are contracted by Abdul Kulkarny (Rahul Dev) to assassinate a prominent Judge of the name Subramaniam (Murali), who is presently working on child kidnapping and murder cases in the East Indian belt for sale of their organs to foreign countries. Aadhavan fails to shoot the judge on the first attempt and angry with himself for having missed his shot, he promises to finish his mission. He then proceeds to use the judge's innocent servant Bannerjee (Vadivelu) to get into the family home as Murugan, Bannerjee's brother-in-law. He locks up Bannerjee's real brother-in-law, Murugan (Sathyan), in a ship and threatens Bannerjee with his name all the time. Slowly Aadhavan, as Murugan, begins to win over the members of the judge's household beginning with the judge's mother (B. Saroja Devi), and eventually and finally, his niece, Thara (Nayantara). He attempts to assassinate the judge in the middle of the night and also plants a bomb in the van while the judge is traveling to Darjeeling, but both attempts fail. In Darjeeling, Aadhavan is handed over a guitar belonging to the aspiring wannabe musician, Ilayaman (Ramesh Khanna) by Thara to hide away. He plants a mobile bomb in the guitar and places it in one of the cars which soon explodes.

Thara is now suspicious but Murugan informs her in secret that he is in fact the judge's son Madhavan who ran away from home when he was ten. Thara soon informs all the members of the household except the judge and Ilayaman that Murugan is Madhavan, although in private Muruguan tells Bannerjee that he was only joking and that he is not Madhavan.

However, on Thara's birthday, Aadhavan shows that he is indeed Madhavan. In a flashback, it is shown that a young Madhavan carried a gift for Thara, where a bomb had been planted by Madhavan's friend's mother as an act of revenge. Madhavan's father had put her husband in jail. Though Thara survives, her mother (Anu Hassan) opens the box and gets killed along with her husband. Madhavan runs away from home after stealing a gun from the police, accidentally shooting his father and killing his friend's mother who planted the bomb in the toy. He reaches Kolkata and finds a home in Ibrahim Rowther's place after saving him from his enemies.

Meanwhile, Abdul Kulkarny is fed up with the attempts of Aadhavan and Ibrahim Rowther and decides to play his cards in another way. He persuades Ibrahim and his gang to surrender to the police and make a confession regarding Aadhavan. When Police ACP (Riyaz Khan) confronts Aadhavan and is about to have him hauled off, Aadhavan takes the judge and Thara hostage after shooting the ACP in his leg. He also takes the laptop and memory stick where the entire information about the culprits involved in the child kidnappings and murder case are stored. Later, the police commissioner arrives to reveal a further plot twist: Aadhavan is indeed Madhavan, the judge's runaway son. The police had caught him when he was making his escape after his attempt to kill the judge had failed. It was then that he made his confession of being the judge's son. The police asked him to go back to the house to protect his father over a twenty four hour period everyday.

This information is relayed to the judge who is tearfully grateful to his son. Meanwhile, Abdul Kulkarny attacks the vehicle in which the judge, Madhavan and Thara are traveling and a fight ensues where Kulkarny is ultimately killed in his helicopter. All ends well and Bannerjee says he has brought two new servants for the house, who ultimately turn out to be K.S. Ravikumar and Udhayanidhi Stalin. Madhavan is asked to inspect them. He rates them as awesome jesters, and the judge hires them,ending the film successfully.

Cast

• Surya Sivakumar as Aadhavan/Madhavan/Murugan
• Nayantara as Tara
• Anand Babu as Tharani
• Vadivelu as Banerjee (Baner Kuppaa)
• Ramesh Khanna as Ilayaman (Kuppusamy)
• Murali as Judge Subramaniam
• B. Saroja Devi as Judge Subramaniam's mother/Madhavan's grandmother
• Sayaji Shinde as Ibrahim Rowther
• Rahul Dev as Abdul Kulkarni
• Sathyan as Murugan
• Anu Haasan as Anu/Thara's Mother
• Riyaz Khan as Police ACP Ravikumar
• Manobala
• Kiri Jeyam
• Alex
• K. S. Ravikumar in a special appearance
• Udhayanidhi Stalin in a special appearance

Awards and nominations

Award	Category	Nominee	Result
2009 Filmfare Awards South	Best Male Playback	Karthik (Hasili Fisili)	Won
	Best Female Playback	Chinmayi (Vaarayo Vaarayo)	Won
	Best Supporting Actor	Vadivelu	Nominated
	Best Female Playback	Harini (Hasili Fisili)	Nominated
	Best Music Director	Harris Jayaraj	Nominated
2009 Vijay Awards	Best Entertainer	Surya Sivakumar	Won
	Best Male Playback	Karthik (Hasili Fisili)	Won
	Best Female Playback	Chinmayi (Vaarayo Vaarayo)	Won
	Best Music Director	Harris Jayaraj	Won
	Icon of the Year	Surya Sivakumar	Won
	Best Actor	Surya Sivakumar	Nominated
	Best Comedian	Vadivelu	Nominated
	Best Compositor	Srinivas Karthik Kotamraju-EFX	Nominated
	Best Art Director	Rajeevan	Nominated
	Best Choreographer	Shobi (Damakku Damakku)	Nominated
	Favourite Film	Udhayanidhi Stalin	Nominated
	Favourite Director	K. S. Ravikumar	Nominated
	Favourite Hero	Surya Sivakumar	Nominated
	Favourite Heroine	Nayantara	Nominated
Favourite Song	Harris Jayaraj (Hasili Fisili)	Nominated

Release

Reception

The film received mixed to positive reviews. Behindwoods gave a 2.5 out of 5 and gave a verdict "Carefree commercial – Conditions apply". Sify.com gave a positive review stating "Ranging through a wide field of comedy laced with action, Aadhavan is good fun while it lasts. It’s a roller-coaster ride of pure unadulterated masala".

Rediff rated the movie with 2.5 out of 5 stars and ended the review with "Aadhavan is uncomplicated, clean, fun, and doesn't expect you to take it seriously." Nowrunning.com also rated it as 2.5 on 5 and Aravindan D I specially said "Aadhavan could have been good entertainment, but is marred by inconsistent script." while Indiaglitz gave the verdict "above average" and stated "Aadhavan is a movie that would bring joy to mass action lovers and front-benchers.". Malathi Rangarajan from The Hindu wrote "Post-interval, you have to wait quite a while for some concrete action from Aadhavan, the Infallible!"

Internet Film Critic Sharan Srinivas in his negative review, wrote that: "Had I walked out of the cinema hall, I wouldn’t have discovered that a seven-bullet carrying revolver can shoot as many twenty bullets without reloading. What I discovered in the first assassination was that James Bond filmmakers were wrong. In Moonraker, Roger Moore wasn’t able to shoot Drake’s hitmen as he was underwater. Here, Suriya shoots a foreigner from underwater with a silenced 9mm. I also learnt that Bazooka bombs were not instant hits, they were equipped with a timer of two minutes. That’s a good technique as it provides Suriya ample time to regain consciousness and swing up to the bomb to save his family.

On the whole, the comedy track featuring suriya and vadivelu was appreciated.

Box Office

The movie collected ₹8.5 Crore in the opening weekend. This movie also had high collection in Malaysia as well as U.K. Overseas, the film grossed approximately $6,541,485. Aadhavan was the front runner during the Diwali season of the year.It had a gross of more than ₹5 crore in Chennai alone. It was one of the films that reached ₹70 crore at the end of its run. Trade pundits gave the film a super hit verdict.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack features 6 tracks composed by Harris Jayaraj, becoming his third consecutive film with Surya. The soundtrack was released on August 19 by S. Shankar. The songs enjoyed popularity, especially "Hasile Fisile" and "Vaarayo Vaarayo".

Untitled

Track	Song	Singers	Length (min:sec)	Lyrics
1	"Hasili Fisili"	Karthik, Harini, Dr. Burn, Maya	05:25	Pa. Vijay
2	"Yeno Yeno Panithuli"	Shail Hada, Sudha Raghunathan, Andrea Jeremiah	05:15	Thamarai
3	"Dammaku Dammaku"	Benny Dayal	05:00	Na. Muthukumar
4	"Vaarayo Vaarayo"	Unnikrishnan, Chinmayi, Megha	05:24	Kabilan
5	"Dekho Dekho"	Suvi Suresh, Sandhya, Sri Charan	05:29	Vaalee
6	"Maasi Maasi"	Mano, Megha	05:34	Vaalee

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Malathy Sundaram from Behindwoods
Pavithra Srinivasan from Rediff

Critical response

The album received mixed to positive reviews from critics, with praise being dedicated to the songs Hasili Fisile and Vaarayo Vaarayo. Malathy Sundaram from Behindwoods said "There is a lot of technical finesse to this album. What surprises us here is the banality of the lyrics! One would have expected better lyrics from all these songwriters! Conscious usage of various instruments adds its own appeal to any album. Which is what we see here." Pavithra Srinivasan from Rediff said "Harris Jeyaraj is one of those composers who is not capable of turning out bad stuff even on a bad day, but this is one of those albums you can smell mediocrity from a mile away. Looks like Harris Jeyaraj is caught in the recycling rut. Yes, there are brief flashes of inspiration, but they last only moments."