Singam

<p>Duraisingam “Singam”, an honest police officer, lives in Nallur, a small village in in , and is assisted by his bumbling colleague Erimalai. Singam belongs to Nallur with his father Soundarapandi, having a respectable status in the village. His family business is , and Singam wants to join it, but he joined the police force due to Soundarapandi’s wishes. Singam resolves most of the problems in his village with and mutual counselling. He uses force only when the situation demands it, thereby gaining much reputation and love from the villagers. Mahalingam, an industrialist in and friend of Soundarapandi, arrives at the village with his daughters Kavya and Divya. Singam initially assumes Kavya as a prankster when she is about to prank her cousin by wearing a tiger costume. While roaming around the village, Singam accidentally slaps Kavya, but later apologizes to her. Kavya gets moved by this and slowly falls in love with him. After some hilarious incidents, Kavya professes her love to Singam. Initially taken aback, Singam reciprocates Kavya’s love. Mayil Vaaganam, a -based gangster infamous for extortion and kidnapping, is required to travel to Nallur to sign a conditional bail after forcing a builder to commit suicide. Mayil instead sends one of his allies to do the formalities, enraging Singam. Singam demands that Mayil sign the bail in person. A humiliated Mayil reaches Nallur, but is unable to take any revenge on Singam, fearing the immense love and devotion of the entire village towards Singam. Using his political contacts, Mayil gets Singam transferred to Chennai to teach him a lesson. Unaware of Mayil’s hand behind his transfer, Singam joins police station. His co-worker SI Ravi hates Mayil for his crimes, but is unable to take any action because of Mayil’s political powers. Singam’s senior Rajendran is on Mayil’s payroll and takes care in concealing and eliminating evidence of Mayil’s crimes. The does not help Singam as there is unavailability of evidence against Mayil. Rajendran warns Singam to stay away from Mayil’s case. Unable to take on Mayil in his stronghold, Singam wants to return to his village, but is stopped by Kavya, who encourages him to fight against Mayil and end his crime network. Being mentally tortured by Mayil, Singam arrests Mayil’s brother Vaikuntam in a fake case of illegally smuggling . He thwarts off Rajendran in full view of the public when Rajendran, bounded by his duties to Mayil, tries to protect the henchmen. Mayil kidnaps Divya for ransom. Singam rescues her with unexpected help from Ramanathan. Singam successfully traces the origins of the kidnapping racket to Mayil and also gets promoted to of the specially-formed Anti-Kidnapping . Mahalingam, who was hostile to Singam following an altercation with Soundarapandi back at Nallur, softens up and agrees to give him Kavya’s hand in marriage. The entire police force, including the police commissioner and Rajendran, are now on Singam’s side and help him to fight Mayil. They manage to kill Mayil’s henchmen in an encounter at a hospital and begins to target everyone and everything related to Mayil. In retribution, Mayil starts targeting everyone close to Singam, including Kavya, but is saved by Singam, and Ravi, who is hacked to death by Mayil. To escape from getting arrested, Mayil kidnaps the daughter of Home Minister. Mayil falsely tells Singam that he is going to with her, but he is actually going to in to put the police off the track. However, Singam manages to pursue them till near , where he rescues her and kills Mayil in an . Singam resigns from his job publicly in a felicitation function organised for him, where he heads back to Nallur with Kavya. Singam is stopped briefly by Ramanathan, who offers an undercover mission, to which he willingly agrees. After had finished ‘s , discussions regarding his subsequent project, notably his 25th film, were held. Initially, reports emerged that it was going to be directed by . At the launch of his film in May 2009, however, director announced officially that he would direct Suriya’s 25th film titled and that he had finished penning the script. Becoming Suriya’s third film with Hari following and , it was announced that the project would release in July 2010. Suriya’s cousin, K. E. Gnanavel Raja was announced as the producer. was chosen as the music director, thus becoming his third venture with Suriya. Suriya was revealed to play a police officer in the film, the second time in his career after . was chosen to play the female lead after her second Tamil film . Priyan was chosen as the lead camera man and V.T. Vijayan as the editor. After completing , Hari joined the cast and crew to start the filming in 2009. The shooting began in district and was carried on in southern parts of . A scene from the song “Stole my Heart” was shot in Creek Park in that was choreographed by . Afterwards, some scenes where shot in . The main scenes were shot in , . During December, Hari announced that the film wouldn’t have a formal audio launch as per his previous films and that the shooting would get over quickly. The trailers were released on 24 February. acquired the distribution rights, and bought the music for a hefty price. The film’s soundtrack, released on 9 May 2010, was scored by Devi Sri Prasad, marking his third collaboration with Suriya after and and with Hari for second time after . All lyrics are written by Sahithi. was released on 28 May 2010 in 850 screens worldwide. gave 3/5 stars and wrote “Singam is a predictable entertainer that follows the age old formula, which might appeal to viewers who finds comfort in mass masala entertainers.” gave 2.5/5 stars and wrote “Singam is an unapologetic entertainer and has Suriya in every frame. Lovers of commercial potpourri will definitely get their money’s worth.” Bhama Devi Ravi of gave 3.5/5 stars and wrote “Even with a sleepy narration in the first 30 minutes or so, is worth a watch.” was the third highest grossing Tamil film of the year in Chennai, collecting more than 5.38 crore there. In and the United Kingdom, the film collected $1,471,508 and $12,956 respectively. was remade in multiple different languages; in as (2011), in as (2011), in Bengali as , and in as (2019). It was dubbed in under the title , and was released on 2 July 2010. Despite the remake, the film was dubbed in Hindi under the title . The film’s success lead to two sequels: (2013) and (2017). Vivek, and parodied Suriya’s character in the Malayalam film (2011), (2011) and (2013), respectively. The famous line in the film, “Ongi Adicha Ondra Tonne Weight da!” (My hit is of one and half in force!) was used in “The Punch Song”, a song from the film, (2014).</p>