Velayudham

Velayudham is a 2011 Indian Tamil-language superhero film directed by Mohan Raja and produced by V. Ravichandran under Aascar Film. It stars Vijay in the titular role with Hansika Motwani and Genelia D'Souza, while Santhanam, Saranya Mohan, Soori, Abhimanyu Singh, and Vineet Kumar play other prominent roles. The music was composed by Vijay Antony with cinematography by Priyan and editing by B. Lenin and V. T. Vijayan. The film was inspired from the 2000 Telugu film Azad and also marks Genelia's last Tamil film till date. Velayudham was released on 26 October 2011 to positive reviews and became a commercial success at the box office.

Plot
Bharathi, a young journalist, and her two friends investigate a series of terrorist attacks which have taken place in Chennai and also other illegal activities like human trafficking. One night, Bharathi and her friends are caught video-recording illicit activities happening in a secluded house by a group of thugs, where they attempt to flee from them. While Bharathi's friends are killed, Bharathi manages to escape despite being stabbed by one of the thugs. After the attack on Bharathi and her friends, the thugs' vehicle explodes due to a small mishap when a cigarette falls over petrol packets stored in the vehicle, killing all the thugs.

Bharathi comes up with a new idea to eradicate society's evils by creating and propagating a fictional character called Velayudham (after seeing Lord Muruga's temple nearby) who wants to clean up the city of terrorism and other illegal activities. Meanwhile, Velayudham alias Velu is a milk vendor who lives with his younger sister Kaveri and cousin Vaidehi in the village called Pavunoor. One day, Velu, Kaveri, and Vaidehi leave for Chennai to collect money from a chit fund for Kaveri's marriage. At the Chennai Egmore railway station, Velu's handbag is stolen by a petty thief named Speedu. Velu pursues Speedu on a motorbike parked at the station and manages to get back his money. Moments after alighting from the bike, the bike explodes.

The parked bike had a bomb which was meant to ensure a terrorist attack at the railway station, which leads to Velu inadvertently thwarted a deadly terrorist attack. Velu unknowingly prevents more terrorist attacks and comes to Bharathi's attention. At first, Bharathi hates him due to various incidents, but when she saw him unknowingly handing over the terrorists to the police, she falls in love with him without knowing that Vaidehi also loves him. When Bharathi learns that Velu unknowingly prevented the attacks, she convinces him to take up the role of Velayudham and provide hope for the people, but Velu refuses and tells her to finish the avatar of Velayudham.

Later, Velu learns that his money is stolen and the company where he insured the money was a corrupt company. The people get enraged when they learn that their money was stolen. One of them commits suicide by burning himself alive. When the villagers tells that Velayudham will come and help them, Velu plans to take the role of Velayudham and kills the person who stole the people's money and returns the money to the people. In the avatar of Velayudham, Velu starts to eradicate society's evils among others, where he soon gains wide support and acceptance among the public and police.

Few months later, Velu returns to Pavunoor with Bharathi for Kaveri's marriage. Unknown to Velu, Musafir Ibrahim, who is the leader of a terrorist group followed him to his village. Ibrahim wants to kill Velu since he thwarted every terrorist attack that he had planned in Chennai. On the day of Kaveri's marriage, a bomb planted by Ibrahim at Velu's house explodes, killing Kaveri. After Kaveri's death, a grieving Velu learns from Bharathi that the corrupt Home Minister Ulaganathan is indirectly responsible for the terrorist attacks and Kaveri's death.

Ulaganathan allowed Ibrahim to carry out terrorist attacks in exchange for profits and also even tries to gain popularity by claiming Velayudham as his idea. Ulagananthan plans to reveal Ibrahim as Velayudham's real identity in a function at the Nehru Stadium, Chennai. Velu and Bharathi arrives at the stadium, where Velu kills Ibrahim and his henchmen, by beheading him and avenges Kaveri's death. Velu asks the people not to celebrate him as a superhero anymore, but asks them to express their anger on their own without fear. Velu also exposes Ulaganathan's misdeeds with Bharathi's help. Ulaganathan gets killed in a stampede while Velu returns to his village.

Casting
The film was launched on 15 July 2010 at Madras University campus with Vijay and Hansika Motwani in the lead roles. Art director Veerasamar was roped in to play a journalist with Genelia D'Souza also playing the role of a journalist. Saranya Mohan plays the sister of Vijay's character, while Santhanam and M. S. Bhaskar were chosen to play the comedy leads in the film. Sayaji Shinde, Vineet Kumar, and Abhimanyu Singh were selected to play negative roles in the film. Tom Delmar, who had worked as a stunt coordinator in Hollywood films such as Braveheart (1995), was assigned to choreograph the film's action sequences. Due to his commitment to Velayudham, Vijay almost lost his role in S. Shankar's Nanban since the two films demanded two completely different looks, but later joined the film as the scenes involving the protagonist were reserved to be shot later. R. T. Neason, who earlier directed Muruga (2007) and would later direct Vijay in Jilla (2014), worked as a second unit director.

Filming
The filming was carried out primarily at three locations: Southern Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Chennai. A song sequence choreographed by Shobi that was originally to be shot in Switzerland was canned in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir with Genelia and Hansika filming alongside Vijay.

Delmar was behind the shooting of an extremely tricky train sequence for Velayudham. It was shot on a train moving on a bridge with Vijay performing the risky sequence coolly. Mohan Raja said, "A slight miss and the actor could fall 100 feet below! A very risky sequence, but Vijay did it coolly. My heart was in my mouth when it was being filmed". This stunt was performed in the location Rayagada in Orissa. Another fight sequence was filmed at Golkonda fort, Hyderabad.

The audiography was done by M. R. Rajakrishnan, and the dubbing was done in Four Frames Recording Studio in Chennai.

Themes and influences
The film has been widely reported to be a remake of the 2000 Telugu film Azad, but Mohan Raja claimed that it is his original written story. Raja later admitted that Azad served as the inspiration for Velayudham and that he had penned a new script. In 2001, Vijay had signed up to appear in a rural action film titled Velan to be directed by Thirupathisamy, the director of Azad, but was postponed indefinitely due to the director's demise. Raja told his cast that it was inspired by Azad and requested them to not watch the original. Velayudham marks Raja's first Tamil venture which did not include his brother Jayam Ravi in the cast.

While writing the script, Raja analysed Vijay's popularity among family audiences to insert certain scenes into the script. Post the film's release, Raja said that Ravi had help him in improving the script. Another reported influence for the film was the superhero costume worn by Vijay's character, which was believed to have been borrowed from the Assassin's Creed video game series, bearing a resemblance to the robes of young Altaïr, one of the protagonists in the series, leading to criticism of the film being "copied" from the video game. 7aum Arivu, which had released alongside Velayudham, was also compared with the game. Sudhish Kamath compared Velayudham to the Pink Panther films for featuring a series of "unintentional world-saving incidents."

Music
Harris Jayaraj was initially approached to compose music for the film, but he declined citing scheduling conflicts, subsequently promising Vijay that he would score for his next, which eventually became S. Shankar's Nanban. The soundtrack was later composed by Vijay Antony and the audio rights were bought by Sony Music for a huge amount. The soundtrack consisted of six tracks and was released on 31 August 2011 at CSI Grounds in Madurai, attended by thousands of Vijay fans. Vijay, Hansika Motwani, S. A. Chandrasekhar, Vijay Antony, Viveka and several distributors and theatre owners were present in the function.

Critical response
Pavithra Srinivasan of Rediff gave 3/5 stars and wrote "Vijay Antony plays it safe mostly, with the result that there's nothing new." P. G. Devi from Behindwoods gave 3/5 stars and wrote "Vijay Antony continues to flaunt his success this time around with Velayutham. The album has a bunch of entertaining soundtrack like Molachu Moonu, Mayam Seidhayo and usual mass beat tracks Sonna Puriyadhu and Vela Vela."

Prakash Upadhyaya from OneIndia wrote "Vijay Antony's music has met the expectations of the audience. The album has all kinds of songs and the music director has targeted the mass as well as class listeners." Indiaglitz wrote "The music album [...] presents us a variety fare, however with the main target being the 'mass audience'", labelling it as a "food festival for the appetite of Vijay fans, who are craving for mass masala numbers from their hero."

Theatrical
Velayudham was initially supposed to be released on 22 June 2011, coinciding with Vijay's birthday, but was postponed due to a delay in production. The film was released on 26 October 2011 during the Diwali festival and had a tough competition with Ra.One and 7aum Arivu. The film was released with over 820 prints worldwide. It also saw a release in about 100 theaters in Karnataka and 120 theaters in Kerala.

In the United Kingdom, the film was sent for censor certification and with a running time of 117 minutes, received a 12A classification from the British Board of Film Classification, but the distributor added extra 22 minutes of uncensored footage for theatrical release, eventually resulting in all show cancellations at Cineworld.

Legal issue
Karnataka Rakshana Vedike (KRV), a pro-Kannada outfit in Karnataka, requested all the theatres in the state not to screen any non-Kannada film on the occasion of Kannada Rajyothsava, but some of the cinema halls did not take their plea seriously, which irked the KRV activists to show their anger against the Tamil film. However, the theatre authorities realized that the situation might reach out of control and agreed to cancel all the shows of the day. The film was distributed by producer K. Manju in Karnataka.

Distribution
As per overseas distributor Ayngaran International, the film released in 17 theatres in United Kingdom. The United States theatrical rights were acquired by GK Media.

Home media
The satellite rights of the film were sold to Jaya TV for a price of ₹4 crore and overseas DVD were marketed by Ayngaran DVD. The satellite rights of the Malayalam dubbed version were sold to Surya TV while the satellite rights of the Hindi dubbed version went to Colors Cineplex.

Critical response
Velayudham received positive reviews from critics.

Sify gave 4/5 stars and called it a good value for the money ("paisa vassol"), stating that the film was a "perfect outing with family, but [is] far too long." Rediff gave 3.5/5 stars and called it a "paisa vassol film." CNN-IBN defined the film as a "must watch" and "treat for Vijay fans." Indiaglitz labelled it a "racy entertainer this Deepavali season" and cited it was a "right choice for the festival mood." The Times of India gave 3.5/5 stars and concluded that Velayudham is sure to add to his box-office muscle. Behindswoods gave 3/5 stars and concluded the film a "complete mass entertainer spiced up by Vijay." Similarly Oneindia gave 4/5 stars and described it as a "complete masala entertainer", highlighting its story and "amazing action sequences." Nowrunning gave 3.5/5 stars and wrote "Velayudham, part comedy part action sails through both streams smoothly until it is struck and sunk by crude melodrama." The Hindu stated that the film "simply enters and entertains" and that Raja had "churned out reasonably engaging fare", adding that it had a "strong story, a neat screenplay arresting action, admirable dance movements, one or two hum-worthy numbers and the ever-helpful sister sentiment." Indo-Asian News Service gave 3.5/5 stars citing that it "defies all logic, but has the magic of the star called Vijay." Ananda Vikatan rated 42 out of 100.

India
Velayudham took a big opening on Diwali day. The film topped the overseas box office, forcing the producers to release more prints. In its opening weekend, spanning five days, the film grossed ₹2.1 crore in Chennai. According to trade sources, the film grossed ₹19 crore in Tamil Nadu and around ₹40 crore during the first week worldwide. On 28 October 2011, two days after its release, Vijay, Vijay Antony and director Raja met the press at a hotel in Chennai to celebrate the success of the film. The total collections in Chennai amounted to ₹7.75 crore in seven weeks. Velayudham also grossed ₹5.20 crore in Kerala during its complete run.

Overseas
Velayudham was a relatively high grosser in Europe and North America with Taran Adarsh highlighting that the film was "rocking internationally." Velayudham collected a total of £5,244 in United Kingdom and A$7,175 in Australia.

Accolades
Velayudham was honored with the Best Film Award at V4 Entertainment Awards 2011. Velayudham won the honours in the Best Musician category too. Actor Vijay received Edison Award for Best Actor and Superstar Rajini Award in the year 2012 for Velayudham. Vijay received the "Hero of The Year" award at the 7th Variety Awards 2011 held on 16 December 2012.