''Athanokkade'' () is a 2005 Indian Telugu-language

action film The action film is a film genre that predominantly features chase sequences, fights, shootouts, explosions, and stunt work. The specifics of what constitutes an action film has been in scholarly debate since the 1980s. While some scholars such as D ...

directed by

Surender Reddy Surender Reddy is an Indian film director and screenwriter who works in Telugu cinema. He made his directorial debut with ''Athanokkade'' (2005), which won him Nandi Awards, Nandi Award for Nandi Award for Best First Film of a Director, Best Fi ...

and produced by Nandamuri Janaki Ram under N. T. R. Arts. It stars Nandamuri Kalyan Ram, alongside Sindhu Tolani, Ashish Vidyarthi,

Prakash Raj Prakash Raj (born Prakash Rai; 26 March 1965) is an Indian actor, film director, producer, television presenter, and politician. Known for his works in Telugu language, Telugu, Tamil language, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, English language, Engl ...

, Chandra Mohan,

Rajyalakshmi Rajyalakshmi Chandu, better known by her stage name Sankarabharanam Rajyalakshmi (born 18 December 1964) is an Indian actress. She was a prominent lead actress during the 1980s in Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam films. She was well noted ...

Brahmanandam Kanneganti Brahmanandam (born 1 February 1956) is an Indian actor and comedian known for his work in Telugu cinema. Recognised as one of India's finest and highest-paid comic actors, he holds the Guinness World Record for the most screen cred ...

Surya Surya ( ; , ) is the Sun#Dalal, Dalal, p. 399 as well as the solar deity in Hinduism. He is traditionally one of the major five deities in the Smarta tradition, Smarta tradition, all of whom are considered as equivalent deities in the Panchaya ...

, Narsing Yadav, Ahuti Prasad and Ajay. The music was composed by Mani Sharma, while the cinematography and editing were handled by C. Ram Prasad and Gautham Raju. ''Athanokkade'' was released theatrically on 7 May 2005 to positive reviews from critics and became commercially successful. The film was dubbed in

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

as ''International Don'' and was remade in

Tamil Tamil may refer to: People, culture and language * Tamils, an ethno-linguistic group native to India, Sri Lanka, and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka ** Myanmar or Burmese Tamils, Tamil people of Ind ...

as '' Aathi'' and in

Kannada Kannada () is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly in the state of Karnataka in southwestern India, and spoken by a minority of the population in all neighbouring states. It has 44 million native speakers, and is additionally a ...

as ''

Lakshmana Lakshmana (, ), also known as Laxmana, Lakhan, Saumitra, and Ramanuja, is the younger brother of Rama in the Hindu epic ''Ramayana''. He is considered as an incarnation of Shesha, the lord of serpents. Lakshmana was married to Urmila, and i ...

''.

Plot

Anjali and her maternal uncle Ramachandran kills Bhavani Shankar, a retired DGP, by pretending to feed food for white pigeons in a beach. Meanwhile, Ram, who lives with his loving adopted parents and sister in

New Delhi New Delhi (; ) is the Capital city, capital of India and a part of the Delhi, National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the Government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Parliament ...

, takes up a course at a college in

Hyderabad Hyderabad is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River (India), Musi River, in the northern part of Southern India. With an average altitude of , much ...

despite his parents's wishes. Anjali, who is also studying in the same college as Ram, has her own agenda to exact vengeance against Anna, a local gangster, for her family's death. Ramachandran attempts to kill Anna's aide Abdullah, but Ram kills Abdullah and threatens Anna that he will kill Sada, Anna's second main aide. An enraged Sada goes to kill Ram, but Ram kills Sada. Ram's family witnesses this and are horrified by his actions. Ram reveals his past to his foster parents. Past: Ram's real father is an honest ACP in Hyderabad. Ram's father arrests one of Anna's henchmen. It is revealed that Anjali and Ram are from the same family as Anjali's father is Ram's father's brother-in-law. Anna meets Ram's grandfather and threatens him to release his henchmen, but Ram's grandfather refuses and Anna gets arrested. An infuriated Anna, along with his henchmen and Bhavani Shankar, finish the whole family. Anjali, Ramachandran and Ram are the main survivors of the attack. Ram escapes and is taken by his foster parents. Anjali feels that one of her family members is alive as someone (who is revealed to be Ram) keeps a flower on the

Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha (),* * * was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist legends, he was ...

statue of their former house, which is now a library. Present: Ram's foster parents request Ram to come back, but he refuses and takes them to the railway station. Ram is nearly ambushed by Anna's henchmen, but he defeats them and meets Anna, warning him to bring his brother from

Dubai Dubai (Help:IPA/English, /duːˈbaɪ/ Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''doo-BYE''; Modern Standard Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic: ; Emirati Arabic, Emirati Arabic: , Romanization of Arabic, romanized: Help:IPA/English, /diˈbej/) is the Lis ...

. Anna arrives and kills Ramachandran before challenging Ram to meet him at his brother's place. Ram, after learning that Anna has Anjali kept under hostage, escapes after killing Anna's brother. Ram kills Anna and reunites with Anjali and his foster parents.

Cast

* Kalyan Ram as Ram * Sindhu Tolani as Anjali * Ashish Vidyarthi as Anna *

as Ram's father * Chandra Mohan as Ram's adopted father *

as Johnny *

as Ram's adopted mother *

as Ramachandran, Ram and Anjali's uncle *

Sudeepa Pinky Sudeepa Raparthi (born 28 February 1987), better known by her stage name, Sudeepa Pinky, is an Indian actress who predominantly appears in Telugu cinema. She started giving stage performances at the age of 3, and learned classical dance from ...

as Ram's adopted sister *

Chalapathi Rao Tammareddy Chalapathi Rao (8 May 1944 – 24 December 2022) was an Indian actor and producer known for comedy and villainous roles in Telugu cinema. He acted in different roles in more than 600 films. Personal life and death Rao hailed from B ...

as Ram's grandfather * Venu Madhav as Gulab Singh * Swathi Katrapati as Anjali's friend * Rami Reddy as Pattabhai * Ahuti Prasad as DGP Bhavani Shankar * Ajay as Anna's brother *

Raghu Babu Yerra Raghu, known professionally as Raghu Babu, is a Telugu comedian. He has worked in many films in Telugu industry. He is the eldest son of comedian and character actor Giri Babu. His native place is Ravinuthala. He is known for his ...

as Abdullah * Narsing Yadav as Narsing, Anna's henchmen * G. V. Sudhakar Naidu as Sadha * Dharmavarapu Subrahmanyam as Subramanyam, Ram's foster father * Vizag Prasad as Minister

Soundtrack

The music was composed by Mani Sharma and released by

Aditya Music Aditya Music India Private Limited is an Indian music record label company, which owns the label Aditya Music. It produces music for the Telugu cinema industry and is headquartered at Hyderabad, Telangana. Overview The company was founded b ...

. The song "Chita Pata" is based on "Dhoom Thanakkadi" from the Malayalam film '' Mullavalliyum Thenmavum''.

Release

Reception

B. Anuradha of '' Rediff.com'' opined that "All in all, this is a lavish masala film is worth watching". Jeevi of '' Idlebrain.com'' said that "On a whole, ''Athanokkade'' is a commendable effort by the debutant director Surendar and debutant producer Kalyanram Nandamuri". A critic from ''Full Hyderabad'' wrote that "On the whole, a film worth a watch".

Box office

The film was released with 72 prints initially and later 24 prints were added. The film became a commercial success. It ran for 50 days in 80 centres and crossed 100 days in 46 centres in

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

Remakes

The film was remade in

as '' Aathi'' (2006) and in

as ''

'' (2016). The film was set to be remade in Hindi as ''He, The Only One'', but the film was never released. It was later dubbed in

as ''International Don''.

Accolades

;

Filmfare Awards South The Filmfare Awards South are annual awards that honour artistic and technical excellence in the Telugu cinema, Tamil cinema, Malayalam cinema and Kannada cinema. They are presented by ''Filmfare'' magazine of The Times Group. When it was intr ...

* Best Villain - Ashish Vidyarthi ;

Nandi Awards The Nandi Awards are annual awards presented by the Government of Andhra Pradesh to recognise excellence in Telugu cinema, theatre, and television, as well as lifetime achievements in Indian cinema. The awards are named after the monolithic ...

* Best Debut Director - Surender Reddy * Best Character Actor - Chandra Mohan

References

External links

* {{Surender Reddy 2005 films Indian action films Telugu films remade in other languages Films directed by Surender Reddy Films scored by Mani Sharma 2000s Telugu-language films 2000s masala films Indian films about revenge 2005 directorial debut films 2005 action films Films set in Visakhapatnam Films shot in Visakhapatnam Films set in Andhra Pradesh Films shot in Andhra Pradesh