Thirupaachi

Thirupaachi is a 2005 Indian Tamil-language action film directed by Perarasu and produced by R. B. Choudary under Super Good Films. The film stars Vijay, Trisha and Mallika, while Livingston, Pasupathy, Benjamin, Kota Srinivasa Rao, Vaiyapuri and Manoj K. Jayan appear in supporting roles. The film featured scores composed by Dhina, who also jointly composed one song each with Devi Sri Prasad and Mani Sharma.

Thirupaachi was released on 14 January 2005. The film ran for 200 days in theatres and was declared a blockbuster. It was remade in Kannada as Thangigagi, in Telugu as Annavaram and in Odia as Dharma.

Plot
Sivagiri alias Giri, a bladesmith in a remote village near Thirupaachi, has a lovable sister Karpagam and runs into hilarious incidents, while searching a groom for his sister. When a city guy proposes to Karpagam, Giri accepts their relationship. Giri accompanies the newlyweds to Chennai. On a trip to Chennai, Giri rescues a court witness from Pattasu Balu, a gangster dominating Central Chennai. Giri also learns about Pan Parag Ravi, a local gangster dominating North Chennai and being responsible for troubling Karpagam's husband's canteen business.

During an altercation at a theatre, Kannappan gets murdered by Saniyan Sagadai, a gangster dominating South Chennai. Karpagam's husband tells Giri to leave Chennai for his sister to be happy. After Kannapan's funeral, Giri leaves his hometown and tells that he received a job at a cloth manufacturing company in Erode. However, Giri is still in Chennai with intentions to finish all gangsters. Giri calls Sagadai and states that he will kill him. Giri also calls ACP Raj Guru and tells that he will eradicate the city's gangsters. Inspector Veluchamy, Giri's friend, initially refuses Giri's methods, but later helps Giri in the mission after his son Arun gets killed by Balu.

Veluchamy provides a list of the city's entire crime network to Giri by providing the specification of leading gangsters in various areas. Giri writes their names and soon kills Balu. Later, Giri provokes Ravi to kill his brother and Ravi hides in a politician's house to escape from Giri. Ravi damages the politician’s house and vehicles to makes the police believe that someone has attacked his house. The police decide to provide security for the politician. Through Veluchamy, Giri learns that Ravi is hiding in the politician's house. He brings a group of people, who rally due to losing their money to a fraudulent financier hiding in the politician's place.

With the rally, Giri enters Ravi's fort and kills him. Raj inquires about the people involved in the rally regarding the identity of Giri, but nobody wants to inform anything because they think Giri is doing the right thing. Raj's daughter does not reveal Giri's identity as Giri rescued her from Balu earlier. Later, Giri sets out to kill Sagadai and warns him. Sagadai seeks the protection of a mass group of thugs from the city. Giri uses this as annopportunity to destroy the city's crime network. Giri ignites a war between the police and gangsters in a very diplomatic manner. Giri disguises himself as a cop and enters Sagadai's fort. Veluchamy helps Giri in his mission by injuring himself and Raj orders his squad to hit the thugs.

Giri confronts a thug and forces him to wear a police uniform, where he kills the thug and throws him out of the window. Thinking that one of his fellow officers is dead, Raj and the cops kill all the thugs, but they discover Giri's plan and runs upstairs to find him. Giri stabs Sagadai and throws him to the ground right before the New Year, thus avenging Kannappan's death. In the aftermath, Giri reunites with his girlfriend Subha, Karpagam and her husband.

Development
Thirupaachi was announced in 2004 and marked the directorial debut of Perarasu, who earlier assisted Rama Narayanan and N. Maharajan. Thirupaachi was Vijay's 40th film and fifth collaboration with Super Good Films. The film was initially titled Girivalam.

Casting
Jyothika was considered for lead role before finalising Trisha, who earlier paired with Vijay in Ghilli. She along with actress Mallika in supporting role was selected for the film. Vinod Raj was selected to play Vijay's father, while Chaya Singh was roped in for special appearance.

Filming
Despite planning to shoot in Thirupachi, a village near Madurai–Ramanathapuram border, Perarasu opted against to shoot there as it may create traffic problems instead the village portions were shot in Karaikudi. A set resembling Ayyanar temple with a 90-foot statue, surrounded by 200 mud horse costing about ₹3 million, was designed by M. Prabhakar in a village near Karaikudi. A song was shot with about 1,500 junior artistes in that set and took a week to complete the song. The climax was shot in Vasan House, Chennai, where a huge crowd of junior artistes taking part each day of the two weeks to complete the scene. Other filming locations were Visakhapatnam, Arakkuveli and South Africa.

Soundtrack
The soundtrack has seven songs, five songs were composed by Dhina, while Devi Sri Prasad ("Kattu Kattu") and Mani Sharma ("Kannum Kannumthan") had composed one song respectively. For the song "Kattu Kattu", Devi Sri Prasad reused the music from the song "Pattu Pattu", which he produced from Shankar Dada M.B.B.S. For the song "Kannum Kannumthan", the latter had reused music from the song "Chitti Nadumune", which he produced for the Telugu film Gudumba Shankar. The lyrics for all the songs were penned by Perarasu.

Release
Thirupaachi was released with 207 prints on 14 January 2005, coinciding with Pongal, and other releases like Ayya, Iyer IPS, Aayudham and Devathaiyai Kanden. After the success of Thirupaachi, A. M. Rathnam called Perarasu to make Sivakasi with Vijay re-uniting with him for second time.

Critical response
Behindwoods wrote "Another tailor-made role for Vijay, Thirupaachi scores with its impressive screenplay." Indiaglitz wrote "Perarasu in his debut venture has relied on Vijay's action-hero image." Malini Mannath of Chennai Online wrote "Perarasu tries to make slight variations within the parameters of this scenario, weaving in the right dose of humour, action and sentiment and succeeds in presenting a film that is fast-paced and engaging from the opening to the final scene." Sify wrote "Vijay has stuck to his regular formula – five songs, flying fights, crass comedy, punchline dialogues, dream songs in foreign locales and corny sentiments. So if you have seen earlier films of the superstar you may strive hard to find anything new in Thirupaachi, which is old wine served in a new bottle, with a different label. Ananda Vikatan rated the film 40 out of 100. Visual Dasan of Kalki called Thirupaachi not only the angry brother, but also the masala king. Cinesouth wrote "Perrarasu have written story, screenplay, dialogue, songs and also directed the movie. It seems he wanted to convey the message that “Chennai is not just a capital city alone, if it remains calm, the whole Tamilnadu will remain in peace”. But his understanding of violence seems to be limited to the Aruwal wielding Rowdies who wears half- a kilo gold ornaments on their persons, is the first flaw of the movie. The one and only plus point in the screenplay, is that, it manages to create an expectation among the audience that, whenever the villains are indulging in atrocities, Vijay will definitely raise up in anger to smash them all."

Box office
Thirupaachi was released on Pongal alongside Ayya and Devathaiyai Kanden. The film opened to packed houses with 80 percent occupancy from Chennai and other districts of the state. After taking a fantastic opening for the first week, the film took a slight fall in crowd for the second week. The film completed 175-day theatrical run at Tamil Nadu.

Controversy
After the release of Thirupaachi, Super Good Films were sued by Godrej Sara Lee Ltd. for "defamatory, prejudicial, offensive and slanderous" use of the mosquito spray HIT as they are the trademark owners. Godrej eventually won the case and obtained an "order of permanent injunction and damages" worth ₹500,000 from Super Good Films.

Remakes
The film was remade in Kannada as Thangigagi and in Telugu as Annavaram.