Ratchagan

Plot

Ajay (Nagarjuna) is an unemployed youth who always gets into trouble because of his temper. This angry young man gets heated up when he encounters anyone committing a crime; he takes the law into his own hands, beats them up and then gives them some free advice. Ajay’s father Padmanabhan (S. P. Balasubrahmanyam), who works for an insurance firm, is very unhappy with his son’s attitude, and tries his best to change Ajay's attitude through a meditation expert, but he fails in this matter as the expert suggests that Ajay's anguish is reasonable. Ajay meets Sonia (Sushmita Sen) through his father, and Sonia falls in love with him. What Sonia likes about Ajay is his temper and anger when he encounters anything, which is against the law. Sonia gets Ajay’s father's help to get Ajay to love her. Still, Ajay is not interested in her and seriously rejects her at first; but he later changes his mind after going through some unusual situations, and love blossoms between them.

Sonia’s father Sriram (Girish Karnad) is an industrialist who owns the Daewoo automotive manufacturing facility. He has no objection to his daughter’s relationship with Ajay but has one condition: Ajay must become employed in his factory, control his temper for three months, and not get into any fight whatsoever, even if he encounters a crime happening in front of his eyes. If Ajay cannot do this he will not be allowed to marry Sonia. With a heavy heart, Ajay agrees to the condition; Sonia's love for Ajay deepens and Sriram offers Ajay a job in his factory. Sriram actually has his own problems with his factory in a loss; ten of his workers are working with his rival and younger stepbrother Gnaneswar (Raghuvaran), and they hamper the progress of his factory with frequent, pre-planned mishaps. This leads to the factory's property loss.

Gnaneswar is the son of Sriram's stepmother who gets deceived by Sriram and loses his share of his father's common business empire. Further, in unusual circumstances, Gnaneswar spends some years in jail and returns with a planned conspiracy and vengeance on his stepbrother Sriram. Gnaneswar is now trying to put Sriram out of business, so his ten men create havoc in the factory by killing old workers and raging new workers. So when Ajay comes to work in Sriram’s factory, these ten men do the same to Ajay. Ajay keeps cool, trying to keep his promise to Sriram. But Sriram hopes otherwise; he wants Ajay to break the promise and beat up the ten men and throw them out of the factory. At the same time, Sriram hopes that the imminent marriage between Ajay and Sonia will be canceled since he does not want his daughter to get married to an angry street fighter like Ajay. So Sriram keeps on hoping that Ajay will somehow burst out. Gnaneswar's men damage an important machine to make the international Korean experts to attend the problem. The plan is to kill those Korean experts so that it would become an international issue and Sriram's company would be locked out permanently, but Ajay saves those experts, and Sriram publicises this to create a fight between Gnaneswar's men and Ajay, but it happens otherwise that Ajay still keeps cool in spite of them beating him black and blue, and Sriram's hope devastates. As a last trigger, Sriram uses his father's name in publicising the issue in factory to media so that Gnaneswar's men may think that it was Ajay's father who brought this to media. As expected by Sriram, those ten men brutally murder Ajay's father for this.

After this, Ajay becomes furious and breaks his promise and banishes the ten men from the factory. But Gnaneswar holds Ajay and blackmails Sonia that he would kill Ajay unless Sonia kills herself by destroying Sriram's factory by bombarding it with a truck armed with a powerful Russian explosive. In the climax, Gnaneswar kills Sriram by throwing him off the helicopter; Gnaneswar gets killed when his helicopter hits the mountains; and Sonia gets saved and unites with Ajay.

Production

The film was launched in January 1996, but filming only commenced the following year in January 1997. Despite signing on established crew including A. R. Rahman along with Miss Universe pageant winner Sushmita Sen, Producer Kunjumon signed debutant Praveen Gandhi to be the director and Nagarjuna Akkineni, a Telugu star as the lead actor. The producer revealed that in the director he saw "a young man who is very talented and full of ideas who was willing to work hard." The period in between was spent with pre-production works with art director Thotta Tharani constructing a huge set in Mahabalipuram with an elaborate bungalow and swimming pool as a part of the heroine's home, as well as a huge five star hotel where the villains lived and a landing area for helicopters.

Furthermore, Tharani created 8 sets for the song "Love Attack" with Nagarjuna and Sushmita dancing alongside 50 other dancers. The song "Mercury Pookkal Model Nilakkal" was picturized in the midst of many small airplanes in Bangalore. The film was shot all over India including locations in Manali, Mumbai, Goa, Ooty, Rajasthan and Delhi, with Kunjumon making a claim during filming stages that the film would become India's most costly production. However, this record was broken when Shankar's Jeans released the very next year. Nagarjuna's voice was dubbed by actor Suresh.

Release

The film was initially slated to be released on 31 July 1997 but the strikes in the Tamil film industry delayed such plans. The film was released in Tamil Nadu, along with the Telugu dubbed version in Andhra Pradesh on October 30, 1997 to mixed reviews.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack featured eight songs and a theme song composed by A. R. Rahman. The lyrics were written by Vairamuthu and Vaali. Hindi company, Sony music T-Series, bought the music rights of the film in 1997.

Tamil track list

All lyrics written by Vairamuthu, except where noted.

Telugu track list

All lyrics written by Bhuvana Chandra.