Udhaya

Udhaya is a 2004 Tamil drama-thriller film directed by Azhagam Perumal. The film featured Vijay and Simran in the lead roles, while Vivek, Nassar and Rajesh play other supporting roles.

Plot

Udhayakumaran aka Udhaya(Vijay) is a college student who is doing research on atomic physics. Soon he is selected to study at Cambridge University due to the papers he has submitted on his research. However, he declines and his teacher gives him the job of another teacher who is on leave. There he meets a student named Vasanthi (Simran) and soon they fall in love. But later on, he comes to know that she is engaged to be married. As he can't see his lover married off to someone else, he moves to Chennai and finds a job as a reporter at a magazine with the help of Basheer (Vivek). However, later, Basheer accidentally gets killed in a bomb blast. Udhaya unknowingly gets to know a group of unsavory characters who introduce him to their boss Dhananjay Veeran(Nassar) who poses as a person fighting for the people. They all promise to help him in his goals. Dhananjay asks Udhaya for a weapon to help break the granite rocks to save labor. Udhaya gives him a bomb that he had discovered during his research. However Dhananjay had other plans and uses it to cause a train to explode thereby killing many people. They frame him up. That night Udhaya is arrested by the police (Thalaivasal Vijay) and is accused of the bomb blast for which he was not responsible. Udhaya tries to fight his way out but in vain. him that his boss is not helping at all. While they are returning, the police jeep gets stuck in mud. So Udhaya, finding an opportunity, then cuts his handcuffs using one of the guns left behind by the police. He then sees Dhananjay and Niranjan discussing a plot to bomb a school bus and realizes that Dhananjay is behind all this. He goes to the spot where one bus catches fire and Udhaya saves the children. Dhananjay arrives and seeing Udhaya, he attempts to shoot him, but Udhaya stops him. Udhaya beats him up and throws him into the burning bus. The police arrest Udhaya despite the children's protests to not arrest him. He is taken to court where he is proven to not be guilty and is released. The film ends with Udhaya embracing Vasanthi.

Cast

• Vijay as Udhayakumaran (Udhaya)
• Simran as Vasanthi
• Nassar as Dhananjay Veeran
• Vivek as Basheer
• Rajesh as Muthuswamypillai
• Pyramid Natarajan as a newspaper editor
• Thalaivasal Vijay
• Bala Singh as Ramji
• Gowtham Sundararajan as David John
• R. Sundaramurthy as Niranjan
• Krishna Sekhar as Venkat Raman
• Sophiya Haque in a special appearance

Production

Azhagam Perumal, an assistant to director Mani Ratnam in the 1990s, made his directorial debut with the project. Simran was signed on to be a part of the film and the team began shoot as early as November 1998, with former Chief Election Commissioner of India, T. N. Seshan, also said to portray a key role. An item number was shot in 2000 with Vijay and Sophia Haque for the film.

The film's delay led to Azhagam Perumal being labelled by the media as an "unlucky director", also as his first film Mudhal Mudhalaaga starring Arvind Swamy and Karisma Kapoor had also failed to take off. He however signed on to direct Dumm Dumm Dumm, a film produced by Mani Ratnam, which became a box office success.

Simran briefly announced her retirement from films after her marriage in December 2003 with producer Natarajan filing a case against the actress for failure to participate in shoot. As the film finally geared up for release in the summer of 2004, trade pundits were insistent that despite the presence of Vijay's other big budget film, Ghilli, time should be allotted to publicise Udhaya too. Eventually the films released a month apart.

Release

The film was a failure at box office.

Music

The soundtrack for the film was composed by A.R. Rahman. The soundtrack received mildly positive reviews, particularly the songs Udhaya Udhaya and Pookum Malarai. One of the songs had lyrics written by famous Tamil director, composer and lyricist Gangai Amaran. This film also marked the second song sung by Hindi singer Sukhwinder Singh in Tamil, after the song Lucky Lucky in the movie Ratchagan.