Thuppakki (English: The Gun) is a 2012 Indian Tamil action
thriller film written and directed by AR Murugadoss. It features Vijay
and Kajal Aggarwal in the lead roles, Vidyut Jamwal as main antagonist, as well as Jayaram and Sathyan in supporting roles. The film, produced by S.
Thanu, features background score and soundtrack composed by Harris Jayaraj with
cinematography handled by Santhosh Sivan, who with Thuppakki, introduced the
Arri Alexa camera to Indian cinema.
The story revolves around an Indian army
intelligence officer from a Mumbai-based Tamil family on a mission to track
down and destroy a terrorist group and deactivate the sleeper cells under its
command. The film, which commenced production in December 2011 in Mumbai, was
released on 13 November 2012, coinciding with the festival of Diwali. Upon
release, the film opened to mostly positive reviews from critics and became the
highest grossing film of 2012 in Tamil. The film was also released in Telugu in
Andhra Pradesh, where it was also very well received. Murugadoss remade the
film in Hindi as Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty in 2014, while Baba
Yadav remade it in Bengali as Game the same year.Story:
Jagdish (Vijay), a captain in the Indian Army, returns to
Mumbai from Kashmir. On his arrival, his parents and younger sisters force him
to see Nisha (Kajal Aggarwal), who they choose for him to be married to. At the
bride-viewing ceremony, Jagdish makes up excuses to avoid marrying her, which
includes commenting about her being old-fashioned. On the contrary, Nisha is a
college-level boxer, who is completely modern in her outlook. Jagdish realises
this and falls for her, which she reciprocates.
One day, while meeting with his police officer-friend Balaji
(Sathyan), Jagdish witnesses the explosion of a bus in which they had
travelled. He captures the man who planted the bomb in that bus and soon finds
out that he is a mere executor, a sleeper cell, whose only role was to plant
the bomb. He also discovers that the Islamic terrorist group Harkat-ul-Jihad
al-Islami, which the bomber belongs to, has planned various such attacks in the
city in a couple of days. Enlisting the help of his fellow Army men and Balaji,
Jagdish manages to thwart these attacks and kill the sleeper cell leader's
brother and eleven other terrorists.
When the leader of the terrorist group (Vidyut Jamwal) finds
out about the role of Jagdish in the failure of the terrorist attack, he begins
to target the families of the army men, except Jagdish, by kidnapping someone
close to them. When Jagdish realises the plan, he substitutes one of the people
to be kidnapped, with his younger sister Sanjana (Deepthi Nambiar). Using his
pet dog and his sister's dupatta, he manages to reach the terrorists' hideout,
rescuing his sister, who was about to be killed after Jagdish's bluff was
exposed, and the other victims and eliminating the terrorists assembled there.
Asif Ali, second-in-command of the sleeper cells is captured and killed by
Jagdish.
When this attack fails, the terrorist leader decides to
target Jagdish himself. He asks Jagdish to surrender to him or else there would
be more terrorist attacks. Jagdish decides to sacrifice his life and hatches a
plan with his fellow army men. Jagdish meets the leader in a ship, which has
been rigged with a bomb planted by Jagdish's friend. When he finds out about
the leader's plan however, which is to expose Jagdish's army team as terrorists
and knowing about a Muslim terrorist in the Indian defence — Kameeruddin (Zakir
Hussain), he fights the leader and escapes with him in a boat. After the ship
explodes, he kills the leader. The film ends with the suicide of Kameeruddin
and Jagdish and his team returning to Kashmir.