Citizen (film)

Citizen is a 2001 Tamil film directed by Saravana Subbiah and produced by S. S. Chakravarthy. The film features Ajith Kumar in dual lead role as a father and son with Meena, Vasundhara Das and Nagma playing supporting roles. The film's score and soundtrack are composed by Deva, whilst cinematography was handled by Ravi K. Chandran. The film opened to positive reviews in June 2001 and was a commercial success at the box office.

Plot

A district collector, a judges, and a police official are all kidnapped in broad daylight. The kidnapper cocking-a-snook at the establishment, calling himself 'Citizen' and appearing in different disguises to get at his targets. C.B.I. officer Sarojini (Nagma) finally traces the common factor among the kidnapped trio to the fictional hamlet of Athippatti, consisting of fishermen. But to her surprise both the village and its 690 odd inhabitants seemed to have been wiped away from the face of the official gazette maps. The diggings tell a story of a mass massacre that must have taken place about a couple of decades back. 'Citizen' is finally apprehended. He comes out with his story of the gory happenings at Athippatti and how he, as a little boy, had been the sole survivor of the nightmare that gripped the village that day from the map of India, twenty years back. The entire village was wiped off including women and children by the three kidnapped officials because of their greed for power and money. Ajith wants the citizenship of the three government officials revoked including their families as a punishment for their atrocities to the inhabitants of Athippatti.

Cast

• Ajith Kumar as Citizen (Arivaanandham/Anthony/Abdullah) and Subramani
• Meena as Sevali
• Nagma as Sarojini Harichandran
• Vasundhara Das as Indhu
• Rajesh as Judge
• Nizhalgal Ravi as Santhanam
• Cochin Hanifa as Manmadhakutty
• Devan as DGP Devasakayam
• Rajeev as Public Prosecutor
• Pandiyan as Vaappa
• Ajay Rathnam as AC Krishnamoorthy
• Vinu Chakravarthy as Amaichar Idithaangi
• Dr. Sharmila as Vaappa's Wife
• Kanal Kannan in a cameo appearance
• Pandu
• Besant Ravi
• Sethu Vinayagam as Minister
• Mohan Natarajan
• Chandrasekhar

Production

Early indications suggested that the film directed by Saravana Subbiah was a remake of the 1973 English film The Day of the Jackal, but it proved to be untrue.^[1] Ajith Kumar put on weight for the film, which would feature him in nine roles and claimed that he was inspired by Kamal Haasan's award-winning performances in such roles while taking up the film.^[2] Sameera Reddy was originally a part of the cast but opted out as she could not offer bulk dates for the film.^[3][4] Subsequently singer Vasundhara Das, who had earlier appeared in Hey Ram was roped in to play the leading lady, while Nagma was also selected to essay the role of an officer.^[5] A special feature into the making of the project was broadcast by Sun TV in May 2001.^[6] The make-up man, Anil Premgikar, was referred to the team by Kamal Haasan when Ajith went to give his wedding invitation to Kamal Haasan during the shoot of Hey Ram.^[7] Gemini Ganesan was also initially meant to play a role in the film, but his character was later altered in the script and replaced by Pandiyan.^[8]

After months of pre-production, the shoot of the film began on 28 December 2000 with Ajith and Vasundhara Das, with Ravi K. Chandran as cinematographer who had replaced P. C. Sriram in the project.^[9][10] It took six hours daily for Ajith to don the make-up for the role, so found himself waking up at early hours to get ready for the shot. The location for the Athipatty scenes was an island situated on the outskirts of Chennai and it took three hours for the team to travel from the city and then by boat to get there.^[11][12] A scene in the film featured five thousand of Ajith's fans as extras and the shot was filmed at Rajaji Hall.^[5] A song in the film was shot in Australia in mid 2000, delaying the proposed release date of 1 May.^[13]

Release

The review from The Hindu labelled it as "a slow starter, but it picks up momentum after the first half and peaks to a climax, with a difference", adding that it is a " definite milestone in Ajit's acting career". Furthermore, the sync between the dubbing artiste, Anuradha and Nagma was criticised.^[14]

The film was later dubbed and released as Citizen in Telugu, to mixed reviews.^[15] His performance won the Cinema Express Award for Best Actor – Tamil. The actor and director began to work on another project titled Itihasam, written by Sujatha and focusing on caste issues, but the production was shelved.^[16]

Soundtrack

The music was composed by Deva.

References

External links

• Citizen on IMDb