Vandae Maatharam

Plot

Gopikrishnan (Mammootty) and Anwar Hussain (Arjun) are tough police officers. They analyze farmers' struggle and related social violence to put forward an amicable solution to have lasting harmony. They are highly disturbed by the terrorists' infiltrations. Nandini (Sneha), an aviator, is Gopikrishnan's wife and they are sad that they don't have a child. The rest of the story deals with how they counter act against the terrorists and save the land.

Cast

Production

The shooting started by the middle of 2007 and later on the story was modified due to some personal problems. The film was started with Karthi as the director, but after the first schedule the producer Henry, who also wrote the script, replaced him with debutante T. Aravind. The film was shot at locations in Kochi, Chennai, Marthandam and Thengapattanam. It took 100 days of shooting and ten schedules to complete the film. The Tamil version was initially titled Aruvadi but was later changed to Vandae Maatharam too. The audio launch was held on 3 July 2010 and the movie was all set to release on the eve of Ramzan, 10 September 2010 in both Tamil and Malayalam. But at the last moment, it couldn't make it to the theatres. Then, it was released on 17 September 2010.

Amitabh Bachchan was approached to do a pivotal role in the movie, but as he was not able to allocate the call sheets, Nassar played the role. Two heroines were signed, Sneha was paired with Mammootty and played the role of a pilot, the other heroine Shraddha Arya was paired with Arjun and played the role of an ornithologist. In 2007, A. R. Rahman was approached to score the music of the film. But during that time, he was busy with the composing work of Jodhaa Akbar. Vidyasagar was reported to compose five songs; but at the end it turned out that D. Imman was the composer. Stunts director for the film was the renowned stunt director Allan Amin.

Reception

Sify and Nowrunnig give the film 2/5 saying, "The done to death patriotic theme receives no fresh makeover in the film. If only it had paid more attention to that feeble script instead of raking up all that clatter and clamor on screen, would it have made more sense".

Soundtrack

The soundtrack features six songs composed by D. Imman and lyrics penned by Mankombu Gopalakrishnan and Vayalar Sarath Chandra Varma for the Malayalam version and Vairamuthu, Snehan, Nandalala and Viveka for the Tamil version. The albums were released on 3 July 2010. A patriotic song penned by Vairamuthu was rendered by ten singers: D. Imman, Harish Raghavendra, Vijay Yesudas, Haricharan, Naresh Iyer, Krish, Pop Shalini, Mathangi, Srilekha Parthasarathy and Chinmayi.

Release

The satellite rights of the film's Tamil version were sold to Sun TV. The film's Tamil version was given a "U" certificate by the Indian Censor Board.