Pudhupettai

Pudhupettai
Cover
Directed by	Selvaraghavan
Produced by	K. Muralidharan V. Swaminathan G. Venugopal
Written by	Selvaraghavan Balakumaran
Starring	Dhanush Sneha Sonia Agarwal
Music by	Yuvan Shankar Raja
Cinematography	Arvind Krishna
Editing by	Kola Bhaskar
Studio	Lakshmi Movie Makers
Release dates	26 May 2006 (2006-05-26)
Running time	170 minutes
Country	India
Language	Tamil

Pudhupettai (Tamil: புதுப்பேட்டை) is a 2006 Indian Tamil gangster film written and directed by Selvaraghavan, starring his brother Dhanush in the lead, whilst Sneha and Sonia Agarwal enact the lead female character roles. The film, with music scored by Yuvan Shankar Raja and cinematography by Arvind Krishna, Selvaraghavan's usual crew members, released on 26 May 2006, receiving universal critical acclaim for the music and picturisation and ending up as a hit at the box office. The film was dubbed into Telugu and released as Dhoolpeta.

Plot

The story is set in the backdrop of the slums of Pudhupettai in Chennai, as the title suggests, where a high school kid kokki Kumar (Dhanush) sees his mom dead after he comes back from watching a movie. His father, the murderer is also planning to kill his son Kumar. Kumar sensing danger runs away from home. Homeless and with no food Kumar resorts to begging until he is falsely arrested while standing by and watching a commotion on the street. In jail he befriends handymen of a local goon who take Kumar with them and give him petty jobs to do. In a confrontation with goons of another gang Kumar kills the brother of his enemy gang's head Moorthi thus earning the respect of his gang and making enemies for himself both within his gang and outside.

Krishnaveni (Sneha) is a prostitute who also works under Anbu. Kumar falls in love with Krishnaveni and challenge Anbu to release her. Anbu in return beats Krishnaveni and orders to kill Kumar. Kumar approaches Anbu and asks to pardon him but Anbu wonders if it would be possible cancel the order to kill Kumar. Kumar infuriated kills Anbu and approaches Thalaivar (Azhagam Perumal). Thalaivar says if he could survive until the next day morning from Anbu's goon, who is seeking revenge, he would be bestowed with Anbu's area for business. Kumar survives and Thalaivar keeps him in place of Anbu.

Kumar grows even further in the underworld. He kills his father and his hench men. Murthy is stabbed by Kumar's men. Kumar joins Thalaivar's political party for immunity from police and arrests.

He then meets Selvi (Sonia Agarwal) on the eve of her wedding and falls in love with her and marries her forcibly during her wedding ceremony. Selvi is the sister of his favorite henchman who now becomes his sworn enemy and joins the enemy gang. Slowly Kumar starts accumulating serious enemies and eventually everyone start targeting for Kumar's head. Does Kumar survive the wrath of his enemies? forms the rest of the story.

Cast

• Dhanush as Kokki Kumar
• Sneha as Krishnaveni
• Sonia Agarwal as Selvi
• Azhagam Perumal as Thamizhselvan
• Bala Singh as Anbu
• Vijay Sethupathi as Anbu's Henchman

Theme controversy

After the release of Pattiyal whose theme was the same as Pudupettai (dwelling on gangsters in Chennai), Selvaraghavan wanted to re-do many of the scenes to make them look fresh and new, hence the delay. The re-recording was done in Bangkok, with everyone involved working overtime.^[1]

Music

Yuvan Shankar Raja and Selvaraghavan renewed their association with this film, who had earlier teamed up to give highly successful and critically acclaimed music in the film Thulluvadho Ilamai (2001), Kaadhal Kondein (2004) and 7G Rainbow Colony (2005). The entire music, including soundtrack and film score, was composed in Thailand, where Yuvan Shankar Raja worked together with the Chao Phraya Symphony Orchestra of Bangkok, which would feature for the first time in a Tamil film.^[2] Several Traditional Thai musical instruments, including Khim and Southuu were also used for the orchestration.^[2]

The soundtrack was composed by Yuvan Shankar Raja and released on 15 December 2005.^[3] It features 10 tracks overall, out of which 6 tracks are songs and the remaining 4 Instrumental pieces, which belong to the film score. The lyrics were written by Na. Muthukumar, who had written the lyrics for Selvaraghavan's earlier film as well. However, this film remains to be the most recent collaboration of Muthukumar and Selvaraghavan as the latter had replaced Muthukumar with Vairamuthu for his future projects. Specially mentionable is the fact, that actor Kamal Haasan had sung one of the songs, although he didn't act in the film. The film's lead actor Dhanush had rendered a rap song as well. As an interesting aspect, every track carries a title to reflect the theme, the track belongs to.

Yuvan Shankar Raja received rave reviews for both the songs and the film score, which is considered to belong to Yuvan Shankar Raja's best ever works. The songs, in particular, were hailed as "brilliant", "innovative", and even "a musical milestone".^[4][5][6][7] The music also gained immense popularity among the masses, especially among youth, topping the "Tamil Music Charts" for the following weeks.^[8]

Technology

"Pudupettai" is the first Tamil film to be released in the Super 35mm format which allows for a larger image area packing in more details in the frame. It enhances viewing experience. Technologically the film has many other firsts to its credit.

According to Director of Photography Arvind Krishna, the movie will be a very different experience. "It has some intensive matt-based color correction, and also altered color tones for different scenes and moods.' It is also the first film to be digitally projected by directly scanning the negative at 2K resolutions and converting them to digital projection format.

Box office

Pudhupettai had taken the best ever opening for a Selvaraghan film, netting nearly 2.755 million (US$44,000) from five Chennai screens in three days including 0.98 million (US$16,000) from Sathyam Cinemas.^[9] The film was a success and sold 4 million tickets worldwide grossing 150 million (US$2.4 million) at the box office.

References

External links

• Pudhupettai at the Internet Movie Database
• Pudhupettai Songs at Dhanush Fan Club