Maasi (film)

Maasi
Directed by	G. Kicha
Produced by	Kovai Mani
Starring	Arjun Archana Gupta
Music by	Dhina
Cinematography	Boopathy
Edited by	Saleem
Production company	Anbulaxmi Films
Release dates	16 March 2012 (2012-03-16)
Country	India
Language	Tamil

Maasi is a 2012 Tamil action film directed by G. Kicha. This film features Arjun in the lead role, and released after much delay on March 16, 2012. This film opened with negative reviews and was declared as flop at the Box Office.^[1]

Cast

• Arjun as Maasilamani
• Archana Gupta
• Hema
• Pradeep Rawat as Naaga
• Kota Srinivasa Rao
• Ponnambalam as Nandha
• 'Dhool' Sakunthala
• Bala Singh
• Santhana Bharathi
• Mayilswamy

Production

Arjun signed on to appear in Kicha's film titled Kallan in March 2009, which would see him play a police officer.^[2] The title was later changed to Maasi^[3] and the film's launch was held on April 1, 2009 at a private club in the presence of the members of the cast and crew.^[4] The film's audio launch was held on May 26, 2010 with actor Karthi and Hansraj Saxena of Sun Pictures releasing the disk in a grand scale function.^[5] At a press conference, Kicha announced that two of his police films Bhavani IPS and Maasi would see back to back releases in July 2010, though the deadline passed without further news.^[6][7] The film was set to release in late August 2011 alongside Arjun's other film Mankatha, but ran into a legal tussle with the makers of Idhudhanda Police — 2. The team of that film claimed they bought the remake rights of the Hindi film, Risk and based their Idhudhanda Police — 2 on it. They appealed that Maasi had copied almost 75 per cent of the scenes from the Hindi film that they were remaking and obtained an order in Hyderabad City Civil Court to stay the release of the film, and subsequently caused a delay.^[8] The film was further delayed in early 2012, when the director was arrested for failing to return an advance payment he had received from another producer, hence Tamil Kumaran sought a stay on the film.^[9]

Release

The film opened after three years of production in a few screens across Tamil Nadu on March 16, 2012 to negative reviews. Sify.com labelled the film as "tedious", though stated "watch it if you're a fan of Arjun, he is charismatic, look fit at this age and has an alluring appeal that lifts this film considerably."^[10] A critic from Behindwoods gave the film one star out of five, concluding it is a "highly predictable shoot out".^[11] Indiaglitz written "Had the sequence of events had some coherence, the film would have been more engaging".^[12] Nowrunning written the film as "standard police procedural".^[1] Times of India criticized that film failed in all departments.^[13] Hindu wrote "The action king doesn't need a Maasi to live up to the sobriquet".^[14]

References