Devan (film)
8 /10 1 Votes
| Director Arun Pandian | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Release date 14 June 2002 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Devan is a 2002 Tamil action film directed by Arun Pandian making his debut as director, the film stars himself in title role being his 100th project as actor with Meena and Kausalya in the lead roles while Karthik Muthuraman and Senthil make guest appearances. Vijayakanth makes an extended special appearance. Malayalam actor Saikumar made his Tamil debut with this film. It was also dubbed in Hindi as Vidrohi.
Contents
Plot
When the movie opens, Devan (Arun Pandian) is seen murdering photographer Jeeva (Thalaivasal Vijay) in cold blood in his house. Jeeva strategically positions a video camera to capture the impending murder, but Devan never shows his face to it, and when Jeeva shouts out the name of his killer before dying, the audio is lost at that point. While the police search for the killer, Devan zeroes in on Chetta (Saikumar) as his next target. He follows Chetta to Chandigarh but is apprehended by CBI officer Ratnavel (Vijayakanth). But once Ratnavel realises Chetta's true nature, he begins to help Devan, even hiring successful lawyer Chakravarthy(Karthik) to fight for him.
The flashback shows that Devan's sister (Kausalya) was killed by Chetta. Earlier, Chetta and Devan were friends, but Chetta had a false eye on Kausalya. He used to spy on her when she was bathing, and one day she finds it and then slaps him in public. Chetta decides to take revenge, and on her wedding day, they drug her and send her to church in brides costume with no dress underneath, then Chetta grabs her costume from the car, thus making her completely naked in front of public, then he shoots her and her groom. Devan wants to avenge the death of his sister. In the climax, the villain is killed.
Production
The film was Arun Pandian's 100th film as actor and debut film as director. The climax scene was shot in Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh, at the harbour, where underwater sequences were shot, using helicopters and ships, 3000 tractor, 50 buses and 200 camels. Says Arun Pandian, "It's a story that I penned about 10 years back. Earlier when I'd casually talked to Vijaykant about my intention of directing a film he had said that he would definitely act whenever I directed it. I reminded him of it and he promptly agreed. He was confident and didn't have any apprehension that I being the actor-director would give more footage to myself!".
Soundtrack
Critical reception
Balaji wrote:"though the movie starts off impressively, it eventually turns into a cliche-ridden outing filled with sentiments, revenge and action". Another reviewer wrote:"An interesting screenplay, with suspense, action, vendetta and patriotism weaved in, the male characters are well-etched, and the female characters given just enough scope to justify their presence in the film. Only that the film is a bit too lengthy and could have been trimmed a little".