''Netrikkan'' () is a 1981 Indian

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 ...

-language

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. The drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular ...

directed by S. P. Muthuraman and produced by

Kavithalayaa Productions Kavithalayaa Productions is an Indian film production and distribution company based in Chennai. It was founded by filmmaker K. Balachander in 1981. It has a library of 50+ films in three languages and 3500+ hours of television content. Kavith ...

. The film stars

Rajinikanth Shivaji Rao Gaikwad (born 12 December 1950), known professionally as Rajinikanth, is an Indian actor who predominantly works in Tamil cinema. In a career spanning over five decades, he has done 170 films that includes films in Tamil, Hindi, ...

in a double role as father and son with

Saritha Saritha is an Indian actress who has acted in more than 150 films and provided voice for many actress for more than 200 films in Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu languages. She was one of the popular and critically acclaimed lead actresses ...

and Menaka, while

Goundamani Subramaniyan Karuppaiya (born 25 May 1939), known by his stage name Goundamani, is an Indian actor and comedian who works in Tamil cinema. He is known for his comic duo partnership in Tamil language, Tamil films with fellow actor Senthil. The p ...

, Lakshmi and Sarath Babu play supporting roles. It revolves around Chakravarthy, a middle-aged businessman and womaniser who rapes a woman Radha. The rest of the film revolves around Chakravarthy's son and Radha teaching him a lesson. The film's story and dialogues were written by Visu and the screenplay was written by K. Balachander. Babu and R. Vittal handled cinematography and editing respectively. The soundtrack and score were composed by Ilayaraja while the lyrics for the tracks were written by Kannadasan. ''Netrikkan'' was released on 15 August 1981 and became successful at the box office. The film received critical acclaim with Rajinikanth's performance as a middle-aged womaniser being widely praised. The film was remade in Telugu as ''Ahankari'' (1992) and unofficially in Hindi as '' Rangeela Raja'' (2019).

Plot

Chakravarthy is a successful textile businessman in

Coimbatore Coimbatore (Tamil: kōyamputtūr, ), also known as Kovai (), is one of the major Metropolitan cities of India, metropolitan cities in the States and union territories of India, Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is located on the banks of the Noyy ...

. He is also a womaniser and picks up any woman he wants. Meenakshi is his wife, Santosh his son, and Sangeetha his daughter. It doesn't take long for Santosh to find his father's provocative behaviour and tries to mend his father's ways. Radha gets introduced as a candidate for the PRO ( Public Relations Officer) interview and eventually gets selected and is sent to Hong Kong for training. Chakravarthy, unable to tolerate his son's growing menace, sets off to Hong Kong for a holiday. Here he meets Radha and at one point ends up raping her. Chakravarthy flies back to India where he is met with a number of changes which all point out to the new general manager. This person turns out to be Radha who has joined with Santosh to teach Chakravarthy a lesson for life. How the duo succeeds in changing Chakravarthy's behaviour forms the crux of the story.

Cast

Production

''Netrikann'' is the inaugural production of K. Balachander's

. It had Rajinikanth playing the roles of father and son. Unlike other Tamil films where the father's character is portrayed as a clean person and the son has vices, in this film it is the opposite. Balachander produced the film as he felt that the concept had a lot of scope for Rajinikanth to perform. Muthuraman was initially hesitant to direct the film but Balachander encouraged him to do so. Cameraman Babu introduced the mask shots through this film, the film had 90 mask shots.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack was composed by

Ilaiyaraaja Ilaiyaraaja (born R. Gnanathesikan) is an Indian musician, composer, arranger, conductor, orchestrator, multi-instrumentalist, lyricist and playback singer popular for his works in Indian cinema, predominately in Tamil cinema, Tamil in addition ...

, with lyrics by

Kannadasan Muthiah Sathappan Chettiar better known as Kannadasan (; 24 June 1927 – 17 October 1981) was a poet, film song lyricist, producer, actor, script-writer, editor, philanthropist, and is heralded as one of the greatest and most important l ...

Release and reception

''Netrikkan'' was released on 15 August 1981. Sindhu-Jeeva of ''

Kalki Kalki (), also called Kalkin, is the prophesied tenth and final incarnation of the Hinduism, Hindu god Vishnu. According to Vaishnavism, Vaishnava cosmology, Kalki is destined to appear at the end of the Kali Yuga, the last of the four ages i ...

'' criticised the film for boring visuals, overdose of glamour dance, unintelligible dialogues, lengthy climax chase but praised Rajinikanth's acting and Chalam's art direction. In 1999, the film was screened at a 12-day film festival celebrating Rajinikanth's 25th year in cinema.

References

Bibliography

External links

* {{S. P. Muthuraman 1980s Indian films 1980s Tamil-language films 1981 drama films 1981 films Films about adultery in India Films directed by S. P. Muthuraman Films scored by Ilaiyaraaja Films with screenplays by K. Balachander Indian drama films Tamil films remade in other languages Tamil-language drama films Tamil-language Indian films