Pulan Visaranai


Pulan Visaranai is a 1990 Tamil language action film directed by R. K. Selvamani. The film features Vijayakanth in the lead role while Rupini, M. N. Nambiar, Radha Ravi, Anandaraj, and Sarath Kumar play supporting roles. The film, produced by R. Sundar Raj and S. Raveendran, had musical score by Illayaraja and was released on 14 January 1990.
The film ran for more than 150 days and it was declared as a blockbuster and was considered to be one of the best crime thrillers of its time. It was remade in Hindi as . The character of the antagonist Dharma is loosely based on the serial killer Auto Shankar. Telugu dubbed version Police Adhikari was also successful.

Plot

Dharma is an auto driver who kidnaps young women and is on the payroll of a powerful politician named RR. He kidnaps a girl from Chennai Central railway station. R K Mahendra and Dharma go to RR's house and Mahendra tells R.R. about his plans of opening a hospital in Chennai. He tells him that a person named Salem Cheenathana Chettiar who is obstructing the plans.Later a hired thug murders Cheenathana's daughter. R.K. Mahendra opens the hospital and Dharma threatens the photographer capturing the event. R.R.then tries to rape the girl Dharma had kidnapped. Dharma later murders her when she resists and then her body is buried in house with concrete.
"Honest" Raj, a DCP investigating the murder of an MLA who voted to opposite party candidate in Rajya Sabha elections, zeroes in on RR but is suspended by his higher-ups due to political pressure. A few years later, he is brought back when Governor's rule is established and is given charge of the investigation into the disappearance of a man whose sister had earlier disappeared. The wife of the disappeared man has been repeatedly petitioning the court after her husband went missing in police station.
He then proceeds to investigate the case. The wife of disappeared man claims that her husband went to police station to enquire about his sister's disappearance. He had leaked the info to Junior Vikatan. So the inspector is furious and beats him and Dharma beats him and sends him in ambulance.
Honest Raj tries to investigate Dharma but he manages to slip away. Honest Raj manages to find a skeleton inside Dharma's house. Meanwhile a mysterious lady telephones Police Department, asking for Honest Raj. Honest Raj manages to trace this lady and she tells that disappeared women was a doctor in training in Bombay. There she found that hospital was stealing kidneys from patients. Honest Raj manages to find the henchmen of Dharma with help of the mysterious lady.
Dharma meanwhile fakes his death and comes to Minister RR's house. RR and his wife are murdered by his servant when he planned to turn approver. Dharma is shocked and Honest Raj manages to fight and hit Dharma severely. Dharma is admitted to hospital and the doctor tries to kill him. Honest Raj gets the information that R K Mahendra is behind this and his hospital is used to steal kidney of patients from the doctor.
He travels to Bombay and manages to infiltrate inside the hospital to gather evidence against R.K. Mahendra. His daughter is kidnapped and Honest Raj is forced to fight and kill R.K. Mahendra when his daughter is murdered. He manages to bring back the missing man albeit at the cost of losing his daughter.

Cast

, an erstwhile assistant of Manivannan decided to make a film with Sathyaraj. But Sathyaraj was not interested to act under the direction of a newcomer but he promised that he would act only if Selvamani establishes himself as a director. Selvamani decided to narrate a storyline to Vijayakanth. Vijayakanth insisted to narrate the story to his friend producer Ibrahim Rowther, but Rowther said that Vijayakanth was booked for 2 years. Selvamani with the help of his friend Jothi decided to narrate the story through drawn pictures by having Hollywood films as reference. Selvamani led many rules and conditions which led to the cancelling of shooting for 6 months, with the help of Manivannan shooting was continued. Sarathkumar portrayed the antagonist character after he was recommended to the film's team by Vijayakanth's personal make-up man Raju.

Release

The film was released on 14 January 1990 on the occasion of Pongal festival and became one of the successful films at box-office. Success of the film led G. Venkateswaran to give chance to Selvamani for another project. Selvamani rejected the project as he expressed his gratitude to Rowther to make another film with him. The team again collaborated with Captain Prabhakaran which also became successful.

Soundtrack

The film score and the soundtrack were composed by film composer Ilaiyaraaja. The soundtrack, released in 1990, features 3 tracks with lyrics written by Gangai Amaran.

Sequel

Selvamani began working on Pulan Visaranai 2 in November 2005, a sequel to his 1990 film, and cast Prashanth in the leading role of the investigative cop. He revealed that the idea had come to him in the early 2000s and Vijayakanth's unavailability had meant the film only materialised after a delay. Prashanth underwent strength training for the venture, while beauty pageant winner Medha Raghunathan was briefly signed on to play the lead female role, before opting out again. The film progressed slowly, also a result of Prashanth's marital problems, and reports in May 2007 suggested that Rowther was unhappy with the film's content and felt the film lacked a proper storyline unlike the previous version. The film ran into problems during its censor in April 2008, with the committee highlighting twenty six objectionable scenes. Selvamani subsequently appealed and compromised by agreeing to remove controversial dialogues and a sequence which involved an actress depicting Indian tennis player Sania Mirza. The producer subsequently accepted an "A" certificate for the film, with the soundtrack releasing the following week. The team also revealed that the film would be released the following month, though this proved to be untrue. The film has since remained unreleased, with little news regarding its chances of having a theatrical release, Prashanth indicated that the film was still delayed due to producer's financial problems. The sequel was released in 2015.