Jai (2004 Tamil film)

Plot

Nallamuthu (Rajkiran) receives Veerapandi (Thiagarajan), his wife (Bhanupriya) and 8-year-old son Jai returning from USA after a long gap. Veerapandi’s late father was a well-known factionist in that area and owned a land of 4,000 acres (1,600 ha). While leaving for USA, Veerapandi gave the responsibility of managing this land to Vajravelu (Rajan P. Dev). Now back in India, Veerapandi realises that Vajravelu is misusing his power. He wants to donate all his land to the 2000 families staying in that village. When Vajravelu comes to know of this charity giveaway, he attacks Veerapandi, killing him and his wife. Nallamuthu being a trusted lieutenant of Veerapandi, takes the kid Jai and escapes to the city. After the murders, Veerapandi’s trusted people are put in jail with a prison sentence of 14 years. After 12 years later, the now grown up Jai (Prashanth) studying in a college, falls in love with Nandhini (Anshu Ambani), daughter of Vajravelu. Nallamuthu has raised Jai in Chennai as a fun-loving boy but he grows up a hot tempered young lad. Completing her studies, Nandhini returns to her hometown at her father's place. After a hiatus of 14 years, Jai comes along with other trusted members of his father who are released from jail. Nallamuthu wants to take revenge on Vajravelu and get back all the land so that he can distribute it to the villagers. The rest of the film deals with how Jai succeeds.

Production

Thiagarajan purchased the remake rights of the successful of V. V. Vinayak's successful Telugu film Aadi (2002) and signed on R. Madhesh to be the film's director. An initial pre-production poster of the film was reported in the media to have attracted a clash with another film in production during the period, Saamy (2003), which featured Prashanth's cousin Vikram. Madhesh planned Tibet as a potential location to film and began negotiations with international stunt choreographers Sammo Hung and Yuen Woo-ping to have them in the film. However, after filming a song featuring Prashanth and lead actress Simran which was choreographed by Remo D'Souza, he left the project and began work on another film Madurey. He was then replaced by Kannada director S. Narayan, who with the venture marked his debut in Tamil cinema. Simran also subsequently left the project and the song which had been shot was converted into an item number, the song was shot at AVM Studios with a set erected costing 1 and half crore with using a technology called Mirror Image. The team then approached Preity Zinta, though the actress was unwilling to commit to star in a Tamil film during the period. Subsequently the team signed on London based actress Anshu Ambani, who had appeared in the Telugu films Manmadhudu (2002) and Raghavendra (2003). Producer Thiagarajan also made an acting comeback with the film after a long gap with Jai and featured as father to his real life son, Prashanth, while Rajkiran and Rajan P. Dev (who played the role in original film) were signed on for other pivotal roles.

The film adapted a Madurai backdrop instead of the Telugu backdrop in the original, although the second schedule was canned in Nanakramguda, Hyderabad. Two songs from the film were shot in Sri Lanka, while stuntmen from Netherlands, Malaysia and Nigeria were selected to be a part of the film.

Release

The film opened in January 2004 to negative reviews. A critic from Sify.com called the film "tedious" and added that "all the hype about Jai being big budget extravaganza seems out of place as the story is as old as the hills. Simran's appearance in an item number fails to impress. On the whole Prashanth has to try out something new." Another reviewer added "it is filled with everything that marks a bad movie - an unrealistic college setting, a weak romance, an over-the-top villain and loads of violence." Malathi Rangarajan of The Hindu revealed "the ballyhoo for many a scene including the opening one is puzzling because it gives the impression that something big is to follow suit, but nothing of that sort happens.". The satellite rights of the film were sold to Jaya TV

The film became a box office failure. Post-release, Prashanth noted that as a producer of the film, the team had tried hard but ran into problems to begin with, lamenting that the project had been delayed by a year before filming started and thus the script lost its freshness.

Soundtrack

The film score and the soundtrack were composed by film composer Mani Sharma. The soundtrack, released in 2004, features 6 tracks.