Veera (1994 film)

Veera
Poster
Directed by	Suresh Krissna
Produced by	Meena Panchu Arunachalam
Written by	Panchu Arunachalam (dialogues)
Story by	P. Sathyanand
Starring	Rajinikanth Meena Roja Senthil Livingston
Music by	Ilaiyaraaja
Cinematography	P. S. Prakash
Edited by	Ganesh Kumar
Production company	P. A. Art Productions
Distributed by	P. A. Art Productions
Release dates	14 April 1994
Country	India
Language	Tamil
Box office	₹9 crore

Veera is a Tamil romantic comedy film directed by Suresh Krissna and music by Ilaiyaraaja. It stars Rajinikanth, Meena and Roja in the lead roles. It was a blockbuster and completed 150-day run at the box office.

It is remake of Telugu film Allari Mogudu (1992) starring Mohan Babu, Meena and Ramya Krishna directed by K. Raghavendra Rao. The movie was also dubbed into Telugu.

It was dubbed in Hindi as Double Game - A Romantic Thriller. Govinda starrer Saajan Chale Sasural is official Hindi remake of this movie.

Plot

Muthuveerappan (Rajinikanth) comes to the city from his village for a song contest. He meets Ravikanth (Senthil) in the city and they both work hard for the song contest. Muthu tells Ravikanth about how he fell in love with Devayani (Meena) and how he got her to love him. Devayani is the daughter of a song teacher in his village. He came to this contest so he could win the money and pay off the loan his mother had to the village leader. They both work together and end up winning the song contest. Muthu then goes back to his village with joy and finds out a flood had come and Devayani's house had been destroyed, it was reported that her father and her body had not been found. Muthu thinks that Devayani is dead, and is very sad. He then goes and gives the money to the village leader, paying off his mother's debt. His mother takes him to the city so that they can find a job and so that Muthu can forget about Meena. When they reach the city Muthu finds out that his song was a big hit. Therefore he had become very popular. The holder of the song contest (Janakaraj) calls on Muthu to come work for him. Muthu does not want to, but his mother persuades him. He then works for Janakaraj and his daughter falls in love with Muthu. Muthu who is still in love with Devayani refused to marry Janakaraj's daughter Roopa (Roja Selvamani). His mother says Devayani won't come back and she wishes to see his marriage. Therefore he marries Roopa. Soon after the marriage she has to go on a business trip to the USA. Meena was in fact alive but has amnesia. Muthu's songs are playing on the radio and Devayani happens to hear it and she remembers again. She promptly gets on the bus to the city from a village where she was helping the fisherman who saved her life. She meets Muthu at the recording studio. He is surprised and overjoyed but doesn't tell her about his marriage to Roopa . Devayani is then adamant to get married soon, so they both get married. He then juggles both of his lives (as Muthu, Devayani's husband and as Veera, Roja's husband). He nearly gets caught when both Roopa and Muthu with Devayani go to the saree shop and bump into each other. So to prove that they are two different people he takes a photo and photoshops it to show two of him shaking hands. They then all believe Muthu and Veera are different people. A thief who Muthu had caught and handed over to the police takes revenge by kidnapping his wives. The thief also knows that both are one person, and when he comes to save them it is revealed that both are one person. After he saves them both his wives fight over him, one says that he officially married her first (Roopa) while the other(Devayani) says that she fell in love first. His wives don't want to share. When he tries to explain they go away angrily. Muthu then leaves the city to go back to his village. When he gets home he finds them both in his house. The film ends with them both holding his bag as he enters the house.

Cast

• Rajinikanth as Muthuveerappan
• Meena as Devi
• Roja as Roopa
• Senthil as Ravikanth
• Charuhasan as Devayani's father
• Vadivukkarasi as Muthuveerappan's mother
• Janakaraj as Rubakala's father
• Livingston as Chandran
• Vinu Chakravarthy as Periya Pannai
• Charanraj as Inspector
• Y. G. Mahendra
• Ajay Rathnam
• Vivek
• Charle
• Mahesh Anand as Harichandra
• Vichithra
• Crazy Venkatesh as watchman

Production

Veera was Suresh Krissna's second film with Rajini after the successful Annamalai (1992). Suresh Krishna brought up the subject of Baashha during the making.^[1] However Rajini insisted to shelve the project as the audience have huge expectations on their combination after Annamalai. Rajini said "If we follow it up with a similar film, the impact may not be as great as we intend it to be. Instead, let's go in for a slightly different genre, tone down the heroism in it and then return with an action-packed thriller. It will work better that way".^[2]

Rajini enjoyed his friend Mohan Babu's Allari Mogudu and wanted to do it in Tamil since he hasn't done two-wife comedy film. Suresh Krissna wasn't convinced with the idea as he felt people will compare it with Annamalai, he said that he found the Telugu film to be crude.^[3] After making changes and increasing the humour aspects, Veera started shooting.^[4]

Release

When Veera released, the audience and fans were disappointed badly as they expected something bigger than Annamalai. Veera took time to gather momentum. The film had lukewarm response for first couple of weeks because of comparisons with Annamalai. After few weeks, Veera began its victory run. The audience were in splits throughout watching Rajini struggle between two wives, having no courage to reveal his secret to them. Veera had a cool 150-day run.^[4]

Hindi Version

• Originally dubbed as Double Game in Hindi, the dubbing retained all of the songs and the scenes featuring Veera wooing Devi and his pranks with fellow friends, Vivek and Y.G. Mahendran. However, when dubbed in 2007 as Shankar Dada, Veera's flashback with wooing Devi and his pranks with his friends were cut from the redubbing of the film in Hindi. Moreover, the songs (Annakilli, Vaadi Vethalai) were also cut from the film, giving the total duration of approximately 2 hours, cutting almost 24 minutes of footage from the original film. The film was redubbed and released on DVD in 2007, owing to Rajinikanth's popularity with his comeback, Chandramukhi.
• Muthuveerapan became Murali Shankar in the dub, whereas when he competes in the Pyramid contest, He goes by Shankar Dada as Muthuveerapan became Veera in the original.
• The joke Senthil uses to get him and Veera into the Pyramid building was identifying themselves as Laxmikant-Pyarelal, referencing to their hit song, "Choli Ke Peeche". Here, it's changed to Himesh Reshammiya with his hit track, "Zara Jhoom Jhoom".
• All of the characters here were dubbed using the tapori slang. The popular line, "How is it", was dubbed as "Kaise Laaga Teri ko?", but in later areas, that line was retained from the original.
• Ilayaraaja's background score in some scenes, were cut in several places, replacing it with generic background music that was popular in the 90s.

Soundtrack

The music composed by Ilaiyaraaja. This was Rajinikanth's last collaboration with Ilayaraja.^[5]

References

External links

• Veera at the Internet Movie Database
• "Veera" (in Japanese). Retrieved 2007-05-02. 
• "Rajinikanth.com - Songs - Veera". Retrieved 2007-05-02. 

Bibliography