Virudhagiri
`Virudhagiri' is the maiden directorial venture of Captain Vijayakanth and his 153rd film as an actor. Vijayakanth after plunging in active politics has had only a single release per year in the past few years.
`Virudhagiri' was launched on November 23, 2009 and has been in the making for almost a year. It is a super cop story which is a very familiar terrain for Vijayakanth. In fact he is one of the few actors who is liked for playing cop roles.
Now that he is also big political leader the film will have a heavy dose of political punch dialogues. The Captain has written the story and screenplay as well apart from directing.
The movie's title is inspired by the presiding deity Virudhagireeswarar at Vriddhachalam, the Assembly constituency Vijayakanth represents. But the movie is said to be a greatly localized version of the Liam Neeson starrer film `Taken'. It is also rumored to have traces of the French film `Wasabi' which was an inspiration to Sarath Kumar's 'Jaggubai'.
`Virudhagiri' was shot extensively at Malaysia, Hong Kong, Bangkok and neighboring countries. In fact the Captain says only 25% of the film was shot in India and all the rest were in exotic foreign locations.
Madhuri Idaki, a Bangalore model is the heroine. Meenakshi Dikshit is another glam quotient. Shankar from Mumbai is the villain. Arun Pandian, Mansoor Ali Khan, Peeli Sivam, Kalai Rani, Uma Padmanabhan, Shanmugarajan and comedy actor Shams are other important actors in the film.
Produced by by LK Sudeesh for Captain Cine Creations, that produced films like Narasimha, Sudesi, Vallarasu, Thennavan and Arasangam before. The movie has music by Sundar C Babu, dialogues by Velumani and cinematography by SK Boopathy.
The audio of 'Virudhagiri' was launched in a glittering function at Chennai Trade Centre on November 22. The audio launch function was graced by Cheran, Hansraj Saxena, Lingusamy, Mansoor Ali Khan, Snehan, Monica, Sathyaraj, SV Shekar and Vijayakanth's political party members. The movie has 5 songs including a propaganda song sung by SP Balasubramaniam which goes like `Yezhaigal Thozha Vaa Vaa.'
`Virudhagiri' has been given a 'UA' certificate by the Regional Censor Board in Chennai. The film is hitting the theatres on December 10, 2010 all over the world.