Sura (film)

Plot

Sura (Vijay) was born and brought up in Yaazh Nagar, a fishermen hamlet in coastal Tamil Nadu, in the company of his friend, Ambar La, alias Umbrella (Vadivelu). Meanwhile, he comes across young bubbly Poornima (Tamannaah) who chooses to end her life unable to cope up with the death of her pet dog.

Slowly, she becomes attracted towards Sura thanks to his good deeds. They start romancing. When things seem to go well, trouble enters in the form of a greedy and corrupt Minister Samuthira Raja(Dev Gill).He wants to usurp the land where these fishermen live. His attempts to take away the wealth is resisted by Sura. They cross fight each other. The Minister hatches a conspiracy to bump off Sura with the help of his Ministerial post and authority and sues him. Sura takes on them single-handedly and finally destroy his bad intention and help his town fishermen to get their own house as he wished.

But the Minister is plotting revenge against Sura for taking his money and because he had lost that land in which he was about to build a fair.

He kidnapped Poornima and asks Sura to meet him on a boat. A fight occurs and Sura kills the Minister and rescues Poornima.

Cast

Production

After the completion of Vettaikaaran (2009), Vijay announced that his 50th film was to be named as Urimaikural named after M. G. Ramachandran starrer of same name but it was titled as Sura. Many directors were considered for the 50th film of vijay, Selvaraghavan, S. P. Rajakumar, K. V. Anand, Dharani, Prabhu Deva, Siddique, Raja Mohan, R. Madhesh, K. S. Ravikumar and Perarasu was in the list of the directors. Perarasu was initially selected as director but later opted out. S. P. Rajkumar, who directed Azhagar Malai (2009) was selected as director, Prior to this, SP Rajkumar previously worked in Vijay starrer Once More (1997) as a dialogue writer.

In May 2009, Tamannaah was confirmed to play a role in the film. Originally Pasupathi was selected to portray the negative role but he was replaced Dev Gill who appeared in Telugu film Magadheera (2009) after Vijay was impressed by his performance in that film.

The shooting of the film commenced in Kerala in November 2009 and was continued in different places in Tamil Nadu like Marakkanam, Villupuram, Mamallapuram, Chennai, Alleppey and Pondicherry. The shoot continued on 21 October and canned a few stunt sequences on the Uppaneri Bridge near Marakkanam Salt Lake. Vijay fought with villain Dev's gang for almost three days. After a three days gap, the shoot resumed in Prasad Studios and the song "Thanjavur jillakari" was shot at AVM Studio on 27 October. Unit created a slum set at East Coast Road. A song was shot at Ooty. During the shooting, cameraman M. S. Prabhu and Rajakumar had misunderstanding and he was replaced by N. K. Ekhambharam. Ekambaram reveals that one of the fight sequences, which were shot in the high seas in Tuticorin at 2 am, This fight was choreographed by Kanal Kannan and has stuntmen from Bangkok. Ekambaram says that he has used high speed camera considering the risks involved in shooting in the seas. The opening song has been picturised in a scenic location in Dhanushkodi.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack of the film, composed by Mani Sharma, was released on 29 March 2010 at Lady Aandal Venkat Subbarao School. The prominent guest list includes Sundar C, Sibiraj, Riyaz Khan and Uma Riyaz Khan, Ramanarayanan, K S Ravikumar, Parthiban, Vadivelu, Sonia Agarwal, Srikanth along with the lead stars of the film and the technical crew. Kabilan reveals that lyrics for all songs from the film were written even before Vettaikaran was released. The album features six songs. "Thanjavoor Jillakkari" and "Naan Nadanthal Athiradi" are based on the Telugu songs "Bommali" and "My Name Is Billa" respectively, both composed by Mani Sharma for the 2009 film Billa.

Release

Made on a high budget of ₹20 crore, Sura opened to mixed reviews. The satellite rights of the film were secured by Sun TV. The film was given a "U" certificate by the Indian Censor Board. The film's release was originally slated to 23 April 2010 but was eventually postponed and released on 30 April 2010.

Critical reception

Behindwoods gave it one and a half stars, declaring it "Sura is a usual Vijay fare ." The entertainment site Sify wrote, "the story is water thin and as old as the Kodai hills", but stated that Sura proved that "conviction can bring any formula to life". Rediff gave 2 out of 5 stars and stated that "Give your brains a rest, and enjoy this mass masala entertainer".