Kuttram 23

Kuttram 23
Poster
Directed by	Arivazhagan
Screenplay by	Arivazhagan
Produced by	Inder Kumar
Starring	Arun Vijay Mahima Nambiar
Cinematography	Bhaskaran K. M.
Edited by	Bhuvan Srinivasan
Music by	Vishal Chandrasekhar
Production company	Redhan The Cinema People
Distributed by	Across Films
Release date	March 3, 2017 (2017-03-03)
Running time	134 minutes
Country	India
Language	Tamil

Kuttram 23 (English: Crime 23) is a 2017 Indian Tamil crime thriller film written and directed by Arivazhagan. The film stars Arun Vijay and Mahima Nambiar in the lead roles, with Vamsi Krishna, Aravind Akash and Thambi Ramaiah amongst others in supporting roles. Produced by Inder Kumar along with Arun Vijay, the soundtrack album and background score for the film is composed by Vishal Chandrasekhar. The film was released worldwide on 3 March 2017 and was a profitable venture at the box office.

Plot

The story starts with Jessica (Misha Ghoshal) confessing her sins to a priest at the St. Thomas Church in the outskirts of Chennai. The priest is then murdered while Jessica is abducted.

In the city, Assistant Commissioner Vetrimaaran (Arun Vijay) is celebrating his elder brother, Aravind (Amit Bharghav) and sister-in-law, Abhinaya's (Abhinaya) wedding anniversary. Everyone in the family is happy, except for Vetri's mother who berates Abhinaya for not giving her grandchildren despite having been married for so many years. However, after successfully undergoing treatment by a famous fertility specialist, Dr. Tulsi (Kalyani Natarajan), Abhinaya finally becomes pregnant. While the rest of his family are in a celebratory mode, Vetri notices Abhinaya being moody most of the time, as if she does not want the baby.

Meanwhile, Vetri is put in charge to find Jessica by the Police Commissioner Kumarasamy (Vijayakumar). Initially, the police does not realize that the priest's murder and Jessica's disappearance are connected. Vetrimaaran is the first person to make the connection. He then visits the church to investigate the case and is assisted by Thirupathi (Thambi Ramaiah), the local inspector. They then visit Thendral (Mahima Nambiar), a teacher at the local preschool, who found the priest's body. She and her family do not wish to talk to the police any further, leading Vetri to believe she might be hiding something. Thendral's family then move out of the city's outskirts and unknowingly into the apartment right opposite Vetri's home. Only then does Vetri realize that her family is finding a groom for her and people will start questioning her morals if the police keeps on visiting her. Eventually, Thendral reveals that she saw two cars that day outside the church; one belonging to Jessica, and another black minivan driven by a group of mysterious young men.

As it so happens, Thendral is attacked by a group of thugs driving a similar minivan. She is saved by Vetri. The thugs manage to escape but Vetri manages to note down their license plate, which turns out to be fake. After this incident, Vetri and Thendral start dating and fall in love. At around the same time, Jessica's body is found at a landfill site and it is revealed that she was pregnant at the time of her murder. Her husband, the director of a leading TV channel, simply claims that they have only recently tried to conceive.

Vetri's investigation soon leads him and his team to a petrol station close to the church. The security cameras captured the men in the black minivan. At the same time, Thendral notices that the men are outside her apartment. She phones Vetri, who instructs her to shut all the doors and stay indoors. When Vetri shows up, the men have gone. He then goes home to rest and sees that his sister-in-law has hanged herself to death. The police concludes that Abhinaya committed suicide since there was no sign of intrusion. At her funeral, Abhinaya's mother reveals that she had asked her father for 5 million Rupees a few days before. Also, Thendral explains that one of her doctor friends treated Aravind and Abhinaya. This doctor discovered that Aravind is infertile and cannot have children, leading Thendral to theorize that Abhinaya might have been unfaithful. Vetri slaps Thendral and she leaves the funeral angrily.

While looking through his sister-in-law's postmortem report, Vetri realizes that her body contained traces of Clomiphene that were found in Jessica's body as well. After talking to the coroner, Vetri learns that the body of a third young woman who also took her own life at her baby shower had similar chemical traces. However, since this third woman was the daughter-in-law of a famous politician, these details were kept hidden from the media. Realizing that Aravind might be hiding something, Vetri confronts his brother over dinner. Aravind eventually confesses that he and Abhinaya had secretly visited the fertility specialist for an artificial insemination using his own sperm.

Vetri then visits the Dr. Tulsi at her hospital and sees that television star, Kousalya (Neelima Rani) also had a successful artificial insemination at the hospital. While questioning Dr. Tulsi, Vetri realizes she is hiding something. Before leaving, he requests for all the files on patients who have underwent artificial insemination at the hospital. When Dr. Tulsi claims that would take time, Vetri explains that he knows her husband is the head of the Indian Medical Association, and that she can get those files immediately. While studying the files, Vetri realizes the documents on artificial insemination patients had an unusual watermark with the number 23 on them.

The following day, Vetri visits Kousalya and her husband on set to question them on whether they have been blackmailed recently. Although the couple deny everything, Vetri asks hims team to tap their phones. True enough, Kousalya receives a call instructing her to pay a huge sum of money in exchange for not revealing information that might destroy her career. Vetri and his team shadow the young couple the next day. Kousalya and her husband are seen withdrawing money from a bank and driving through a busy street. Just then, a young man covering his face forcefully enters their car and takes the money. By the time Vetri catches up with them, the man has escaped. However, Vetri's men had placed a tracking device on the bag containing the money.

Vetri easily tracks the man down to his apartment. After a fight ensues, Vetri and his men manage to overpower the criminal and interrogate him. He reveals that he is Gaurav (Aravind Akash) and is part of a gang that has been blackmailing several women in the city who have legally undergone artificial insemination at Dr. Tulsi's hospital. One of their first victims was Jessica, who is an ardent cricket fan. She had hired Gaurav's gang to get hold of her favourite cricket player's sperm in order to conceive his child. However, she soon felt guilty about this and tried to expose her crime. Fearing that they might get caught, Gaurav killed her and the priest who heard her confession. Next was the politician's daughter-in-law who slit her own wrists at her baby shower. Her husband was infertile and her father-in-law arranged for her to be inseminated with his own sperm.

Finally, there was Abhinaya, who learned from Gaurav's partner, John (Vamsi Krishna) that Dr. Tulsi lied about using Aravind's sperm and instead inseminated her with someone else's sperm. John then blackmails Abhinaya for the 5 million Rupees, or else he will expose the truth and bring shame upon her family. Abhinaya finally goes back to Dr. Tulsi to get an abortion. When Gaurav's gang learns about this, they came to Vetri's house that day when Thendral saw them and killed Abhinaya. They then arranged for it to look like a suicide. Once Gaurav was done confessing, Vetri kills him in a fit of anger.

As Vetri and his men head over to the hospital to arrest Dr. Tulsi, he suddenly remembers how a few years ago, a man named John reported his wife had gone missing. John was upset that his wife did not want to bear his children and instead wanted an artificial insemination with a much more superior male. A few days later, she was found dead. Since then, John had gone missing. Vetri has one of his men look into John's disappearance. Meanwhile, the same John is shown to be working as a lab assistant at Dr. Tulsi's sperm bank. He was the one who has been manipulating the donor's records and giving information to Gaurav all along. When Dr. Tulsi and her husband threaten to have him exposed, he swiftly kills them and leaves. On his way out, he bumps into Vetri.

Later that night, Vetri gets a call from John who has abducted Thendral. Vetri manages to track John down and saves Thendral. However, John is a trained fighter and beats up Vetri. John reveals that he arranged for Abhinaya to be inseminated with his own sperm. When he learned that she was planning an abortion, he could not accept it and had Gaurav kill her. While John is on his rant, Vetri manages to get up and overpowers him. The film ends with Vetri and Thendral discuss about the misuse of medical advancements in people and importance of adopting orphans.

Cast

• Arun Vijay as ACP Vetrimaaran, the protagonist
• Mahima Nambiar as Thendral, Vetri's love interest
• Vamsi Krishna as John Matthew, the main antagonist
• Vijayakumar as Kumarasamy, the Commissioner of Police
• Thambi Ramaiah as Thirupathi
• Aravind Akash as Gaurav, John's crime partner
• Amit Bharghav as Aravind, Vetri's elder brother
• Abhinaya as Sri Abhinaya, Vetri's sister in-law
• Suja Varunee as John Matthew's wife
• Misha Ghoshal as Jessica
• Neelima Rani as Kousalya
• Kalyani Natarajan as Tulsi
• K. S. G. Venkatesh as Thendral's Father
• Meera Krishnan
• Stunt Silva

Production

In January 2016, Arun Vijay and director Arivazhagan announced that they would collaborate to work on a "high-octane action thriller" with a medical backdrop, which would begin in the following months. The script was developed in early 2016, with the story being inspired by a novel by writer Rajesh Kumar, which in turn was based on real events. Arivazhagan developed Rajesh Kumar's novel into a screenplay within fifteen days of gaining approval from the writer to use the story. A formal launch event was held in March 2016, with Arun Vijay announced producer his friend, Inder Kumar, while Vishal Chandrasekhar was signed as the music composer, after Arivazhagan's regular collaborator S. Thaman was busy with other commitments. During April 2016, the team shot scenes in the dumpyard of Pallikaranai with Arun Vijay reportedly working for thirty six hours at a single stretch. Following the completion of the schedule, thirty percent of the film was revealed to be over. Actress Mahima Nambiar joined the cast to play the lead female role, while Vamsi Krishna and Amit Bhargav were selected for further supporting roles. The shoot continued throughout mid-2016, with the team filming climax scenes during nighttime in the Padur region of Chennai. The team finished further sequences in July 2016, while taking a day off to give technicians the opportunity to watch the Rajinikanth-starrer Kabali (2016) on the day of release. The shoot finished thereafter, taking 45 days from start to finish and costing 3.5 crore rupees, and a theatrical trailer was released during September 2016.

Soundtrack

Untitled

The audio launch of Kuttram 23 was held on 1 September 2016 at Satyam Cinemas in Chennai, with the event being attended by several film personalities from the Tamil film industry.

Track listing

No.	Title	Lyrics	Singer(s)	Length
1.	"Pori Vaithu"	Viveka	Vijay Prakash, Shweta Mohan	4:29
2.	"Mugam Theriyaa"	Viveka	Ranjith	4:03
3.	"Thoduvaanam"	Viveka	Sinduri Vishal	2:25
4.	"K23 Theme"	—	—	3:07
5.	"Pori Vaithu (Karaoke)"	—	—	4:31

Release

The producers initially announced a release date of 14 January 2017 but later opted out as they failed to get as many screens as they had desired, owing to the proposed release of several films including Bairavaa (2017). Prior to the official release, a premiere was held for media personalities and the film drew positive reviews. Kuttram 23 was subsequently released on 3 March 2017 and won critical acclaim. The Hindustan Times noted, "it is brilliantly scripted and directed – and of course ably acted out by especially Vijay". The Deccan Chronicle noted it was "a welcomed relief from the recent drab of Kollywood", while The New Indian Express stated it had a "coherent screenplay which could have been better". Sify.com's reviewer wrote the film was "a good example of an entertaining cop thriller" adding "this sharply written slick investigative thriller, comes as a huge relief at a time where Tamil audiences are bombarded with several middling movies of big stars" and that "the film is also a perfect case study on how good writing and a technically sound team can offer quality entertainment, which is a rarity in Kollywood". Likewise, Sreedhar Pillai of FirstPost wrote "Kuttram 23 has a compelling story and is packaged in an entertaining format by Arivazhagan" and that "it is one of the better movies in recent times". Following the release of the film, several Tamil film personalities including Rajinikanth and Shankar publicly appreciated the film.

The film gained more screens following positive reviews, and it subsequently went on to become Arun Vijay's most profitable film till date.

External links

• Kuttram 23 at IMDb