Thani Oruvan

Thani Oruvan
Tamil	தனி ஒருவன்
Directed by	Mohan Raja
Produced by	Kalpathi S. Aghoram Kalpathi S. Ganesh Kalpathi S. Suresh
Screenplay by	Mohan Raja Subha [1]
Story by	Mohan Raja
Starring	Jayam Ravi Arvind Swamy Nayanthara
Music by	Hiphop Tamizha
Cinematography	Ramji
Edited by	Gopi Krishna
Production company	AGS Entertainment
Distributed by	AGS Entertainment (India) Atmus Entertainment (USA)
Release date	28 August 2015 (2015-08-28)
Running time	160 minutes
Country	India
Language	Tamil

Thani Oruvan (lit. The sole one) is a 2015 Indian Tamil-language action thriller film directed by Mohan Raja and written by Raja and Subha. The film, produced by Kalpathi S. Aghoram, Kalpathi S. Ganesh and Kalpathi S. Suresh under the production company AGS Entertainment, stars Jayam Ravi, Arvind Swamy and Nayantara. The plot revolves around IPS Officer Mithran who wants to arrest Siddharth Abhimanyu, an affluent scientist who uses secret illegal medical practices for profit.

The film's soundtrack was composed by Hiphop Tamizha. The cinematography and editing were handled by Ramji and Gopi Krishna respectively. The film was released on 28 August 2015. The film was remade in Telugu as Dhruva (2016) and in Bengali as One (2017). In 2017, it was dubbed into Hindi as Double Attack 2 by Goldmines Telefilms Pvt Ltd.^[2]

Plot

A low-level party cadre Sengalvarayan (Thambi Ramaiah) is dedicated to his leader and party. He and his son Pazhani who secures the first rank in his 10th standard state exam, visits the party deputy-leader, now the chairman of the party and a member of the ruling coalition for his blessings with his father. While they are waiting in the party office for the leader to come in, they witness a murder of a rebel party candidate by their own revered leader due to caste-related comments by the rebel on him. When the leader asks Sengalvarayan to take the blame by saying that he killed the man due to rage about the rebel's comments, Pazhani volunteers to take the blame and is willing to go to jail, citing the leniency of juvenile laws in exchange for an MLA seat for his father in the upcoming by-election.

15 years later, trainee IPS officers Mithran, Shakthi, Suraj, Kathiresan and Janardhan "Jana", discreetly assist the police in catching a gang which kidnapped four girls. One day Mithran receives a cryptic text message on his phone from an anonymous number stating that he/she is aware of their discreet activities. In the evening, they go out to meet that person who is revealed to be Mahima (Nayantara), who loves Mithran. Later that same night they happen to witness the murder of a man named Ramar who is a social activist with the pretense of snatch theft. Mithran and his friend catch the gang and their leader and hand them over to the police; however, four days later the leader of the gang comes to the IPS headquarters with the home minister. This political and organised crime comes as a shock to Mithran and his friends. Mithran takes them to his house and shows his research on connecting all small unrelated incidents into the global view of a hidden network of politicians, industrialists and criminals who bend the law for their own financial benefits. He singles out three prominent business oligarchs (a pharmaceutical mogul, a mineral magnate and a don). When he tries following one he realizes that all three of them work as a group and they all work for a wealthy and influential scientist Siddharth Abhimanyu. After the completion of his training, Mithran is awarded medals for specializing in dealing with organized crime during training and also for being the best probationer of the batch, and is posted as the ASP of the Organized Crime Unit.

Mithran discovers that Siddharth is Sengalvarayan's son Pazhani. After his release from prison, Pazhani had his name changed and left India to complete his education abroad. After his graduation, he returned to India and is now a well-established scientist. Siddarth uses the medical field for the wrong reasons and his own profit. Sengalvarayan is now the incumbent health and welfare minister in the minority government headed by the party leader. At that time Angelina, a Swiss pharmaceutical company owner and activist tries to make generic medicines for life-threatening diseases available in India at low cost affordable by poor people. Siddharth's assassin kills Angelina before she can sign the agreement document with the government and shoots Mithran at the same time. While he is recovering from the gunshot wound in the hospital, an electronic bug (GPS + audio transmitter) is implanted during surgery. Through the bug, Siddharth listens to all of Mithran's plans and continuously monitors his whereabouts and whatever he talks via an audio transmission. Then comes evidence against Siddharth in the form of Manimekalai (Abhinaya). She was a scientist at Siddharth's research lab, where a seaweed that can cure diabetes is found abundantly in the oceans. Siddharth tries to sell the technology and rights to extract medicine from the seaweed to multinational pharmaceutical companies but is opposed by Manimekalai. So Siddharth arranges goons and the goons rape and kill her. But before being killed, she records a video and stores it in an SD card so that someone will find it. But before Mithran can find the card, Siddharth finds out and assigns Vicky (Vamsi Krishna) to recover the card, but Mithran tells Jana to get the card. He successfully gets the card after a fight with Vicky, but through the bug, Siddharth knows this and kills Jana. Mithran comes back to his special house where he finds a pin has been changed in a picture which turns out to be the picture of Ananya who was Miss World 2011 and a close acquaintance of Siddharth whose girlfriend Shilpa (Mugdha Godse) was also part of that event. Mithran doubts whether Siddharth himself would have come to his house. Mahima checks the fingerprints on the pin keeping the gun case Mithran received from Siddharth in his posting ceremony and the fingerprints match. A flashback reveals that Siddharth killed Shilpa's father so that she would not participate in the competition and as she will not have a ticket to go to her father's funeral he offers to take her in his chartered flight and wins her over. Mithran frantically searches for the bug which he eventually finds out and removes.

Mithran captures Vicky and records all the information from him. He drugs Vicky and manipulates Siddharth into killing him. At the same time, Siddharth's father reads the changed medical report, which contains very good medical contracts for public welfare and multiple accusations against the CM. When Siddharth learns about this, he asks Sengalvarayan to pretend to have chest pains and move outside to hospital. The ruling party forces Sengalvarayan either to resign within 24 hours or he will be dismissed. Mithran appeals to the CM that he has evidence and wants to arrest Siddharth, and he is granted permission to do so. Hence Siddarth kills his father using his goons in an accident and forces the CM to stop actions against him or he will lie that the CM killed his father for personal vengeance. But the next day at his father's state funeral, Mithran arrests him on the CM's orders.

When Siddharth is arrested, Mithran tells him that the medicine was patented in Manimekalai's name (despite Siddarth being the inventor) and will be made as generic medicine instead of a patent-protected one. It is also revealed that Sengalvarayan is still alive, saved by Mithran and his gang and the public funeral held was for Jana. Mithran makes a deal that he would save Siddharth's life for information and evidence on all of his criminal associates and activities and gives him a bulletproof vest to fake his death during his transport to the court.

They also plan to take down the setup planned by various VIPs to kill Siddharth when one of them gets close to Siddharth, Mithran notices and pushes Siddharth back. To Mithran's surprise, Siddharth does not wear the vest and is fatally shot by Shilpa. Before dying, he tells Mithran that he hid all the evidence in an SD card in the bulletproof vest, adding that he had not done it for the nation but because Mithran had asked for it. The film then happily ends with the wedding of Mahima and Mithran. The last narration was narrated by Mithran on how he became a successful police officer in his life after solving the case (about a boy going to prison for a crime he committed) he read for the first time on the newspaper .

Cast

Production

In February 2013, Mohan Raja stated that he would direct his brother Jayam Ravi again in a film to be produced by AGS Entertainment and that he had been working on the script for the past six months. Unlike his earlier ventures which were mainly remakes, he was said to have developed an original story concept. As before approaching Ravi for an original script, he turned down directing the Ramana remake with Akshay Kumar and denied the news working in the Ek Tha Tiger remake with Vijay as he earlier stated that Vijay was the reason for him to do the movie and believed him that he can pull off an original script as he had Vijay in mind for the script but Vijay wanted Ravi to do the role to give Ravi the breakthrough. ^[3][4] Raja said, "This film is close to my heart; it's an experimental script and I've put my heart and soul in penning it".^[5] In July 2013, Nayantara signed on to be part of the project^[6] and her role was reported to be that of an aspiring police officer.^[7] Raja said he cast Nayantara opposite Ravi because he "wanted a matured actress like her to be a part of the film".^[8] Ganesh Venkatraman was cast for a pivotal role and the actor told that the film focuses on friendship and that he, Ravi and Nayantara played friends in the film.^[9] The film began without a title and was referred to by the tentative title, Thani Oruvan, which was confirmed as the film's official title in June 2014.^[10]

Filming started on 6 December 2013 ^[11] with a two-day schedule in Chennai at Binny Mills where a railway station set had been erected and romantic flashback portions involving Ravi and Nayantara were shot.^[5] The crew then moved to Bangalore in January 2014 where filming was held at a police training college.^[12] As of February 2014, filming was underway in Mahabalipuram, Bangalore, Sri Ramanujar Engg College, Vandalur and Hyderabad.^[13] In March, Ravi stated that the team had also shot in Rishikesh, Dehradun and that the third schedule was currently happening in Mussoorie.^[14] In June 2014, Raja revealed that the team were still yet to film scenes featuring the lead antagonist with reports linking either Irrfan Khan, Arjun Rampal, Arya, R.Madhavan, Arvind Swamy, Arjun and Sudeep to the role, the pair however refuted the reports.^{[15][16][17][18]} It was later revealed that Arvind Swamy would be playing the antagonist.^[19] Raja wanted to cast an actor "whose attractiveness would act as a distraction from his evilness. And I chose one of the most attractive male actors in this country for that role".^[8] In March 2015, it was reported that the film would also feature Bollywood actress Mugdha Godse, who had been paired opposite Arvind Swamy and would make her Tamil début.^[20] This film was shot on film roll (analogue form of film making) ^[21] by cinematographer Ramji, which he feels may be the last Tamil film to get shot in film as the industry has moved to digital filming. The film's budget was initially planned to be ₹15 crores but surpassed ₹20 crores due to delay and budget overrun, Raja and Ravi had to forgo their salaries in order to complete the film.^[22]

Soundtrack

Devi Sri Prasad and Yuvan Shankar Raja were first reported to be the music composers of Thani Oruvan,^[22][23] with the latter revealing that he had been in talks.^[14] Hiphop Tamizha was finalised as the music director in March 2015.^[24] The soundtrack was launched at Suryan FM on 23 July 2015.^[25] The album received positive response from both audiences and critics. Only Kollywood rated the album 3 out of 5 stating,"Though Thani Oruvan is more of a script-centered soundtrack with little scope for experimentation, the composer makes this worth a listen with a couple of interesting tracks which will hit the marquee easily. Hip Hop Tamizha's musical quality is slowly picking its pace with every album".^[26] Ytalkies in turn stated "Overall, Hip Hop Tamizha consolidates his position in Kollywood by scoring a Hat-trick with ‘Thanioruvan".^[27]

Release

Sun Pictures initially signed a contract for the distribution rights for the film; they later opted out after numerous failures of Jayam Ravi and negative talk about the film; the satellite rights of the film were sold to Sun TV.^[22]

Accolades

Remakes

The film was remade in Telugu titled Dhruva with Ram Charan and Rakul Preet Singh as lead performers.^[39][40][41] The film was also remade in Bengali, titled One (2017) Starring Yash Dasgupta and Prosenjit Chatterjee as protagonist and antagonist respectively and Nusrat Jahan as the heroine. The movie is directed by Birsa Dasgupta and produced by SVF Entertainment.^[42] The movie is expected to be remade in Hindi as well, although yet-to-be-titled. The movie will star Salman Khan in the lead role and Arvind Swamy as the villain.^[43]

References

External links

• Thani Oruvan on IMDb