Alli Arjuna

Arivazhagan (Manoj Bharathiraja) is from Chennai and has grown up to be a good-for-nothing fellow because of the neglect and ill-treatment by the hands of his parents (Jaiganesh and Fathima Babu). His only aim in life is to be an irritant to his father. The entire family attends the marriage of Savitri (Richa Pallod) in Bangalore, and when the groom disappears, Arivu offers to take his place. The marriage never happens, but Savitri shows up at Arivu's house later, asking him to give her refuge. When he moves out of the house to take up residence with his friends, she follows him there too. Initially irritated by her, Arivu realises that he is gradually falling in love with her.

Meanwhile, the friends learn that Savitri left her own surroundings just to get over the gruesome suicide of her close friend Nisha (Preetha Vijayakumar), a victim of eve teasing. Here comes Nisha's brother Kishore (Karan), who is still haunted by her death, and he promises to seek revenge from the person who was the cause of his sister's death. One day, Arivu proposes to Savitri that he sincerely loves her, but she rejects him, telling that she looked at him only as a best friend, and that cannot be mistaken as love.

Unfortunately, Arivu lands up in Kishore's house when he follows Savitri, and he is shocked to know that Nisha is Kishore's deceased sister. The reason he became shocked is he was responsible for her death and cries in an outburst. However, Kishore does not know this, and he advises Arivu to succeed in his love towards Savitri. He send drops Arivu, but Arivu's former enemy Kumar (Mahanadhi Shankar) tells Kishore that he is his sister's eve-teaser. Hence, Kishore chases Arivu and beats him mercilessly with rage. Savitri and her parents intervene the fight, and Arivu is forgiven and saved. The film hence ends with a sad note that Arivu is not united with Savitri.

Director Saran united with A. R. Rahman for the first time after his work with music director Bharadwaj for his first three films. This would however be their only collaboration after which Saran had joined Bharadwaj for the films he had directed after.

The soundtrack of the movie was composed by A. R. Rahman. The lyrics are done by Vairamuthu and Arivumathi. 4 songs are re-used from Rahman's earlier Hindi films: Pukar, 1947 Earth and One 2 Ka 4. The soundtrack was released in 2002.

• Alli Arjuna on IMDb