Unnaipol Oruvan

“Unnaipol Oruvan” (2009) is a Kollywood action thriller by Chakri Toleti. It featured Kamal Haasan and Mohanlal. The film follows a mysterious man who uses the fear of terrorism to shake the system and demand justice for innocent victims.

The narrative opens with Govindan Raghavan Maarar, the recently retired Commissioner of Police in Chennai, recounting a single life-altering day. A nameless common man sets up bags in crowded public places and lodges a false complaint to distract police while setting up his base on a rooftop. He then proceeds to call the commissioner and falsely assert that he has planted five bombs around the city, threatening to detonate them if the city does not return four arrested terrorists. The police only start believing the threat when they come across an actual bomb at the Anna Salai police station, no less. In an effort to react as panic sets in, the commissioner brings in top officials and places his team on extreme standby. No matter how hard they try, the man is always a step ahead, moving his phone’s location using high-tech means, keeping law enforcement in the dark. She ultimately relents, and the commissioner orchestrates the release of the terrorists.

At the secretive hand-off location, confusion and discord set in among the officers’ ranks about what they should do next. One badly outmatched officer keeps the release from going out longer than it should to buy time for extraction of information, measuring backfiring when the balance of the other terrorists prevents travelling with characters in a vehicle erupts. The caller then proceeds to threaten the death of the last terrorist, or he will detonate additional bombs. The cops do what they have to do, and then the caller admits it; there just weren’t any bombs; he just wanted to prove a point. With the assistance of a black hat hacker, law enforcement tracks him down. After a mystifying encounter with the man, the commissioner is left in the dark as he disappears without a trace, leaving behind even more questions.

“Unnaipol Oruvan” gives a thrilling, engaging, poignant narrative that brings in a compelling call for social consciousness. The film never succumbs to cartoonish action sequences and instead focuses on tight writing, smart dialogue, and palpable real-world tension to deliver its message.