Plot
Madhan Kumar is an auditor by profession, who lives in Chennai and also learns music part-time in a college. Mythili, a naive woman, also learns music from the same college. She gets scared upon seeing Madhan one day because she happens to witness a dream of her getting raped by him. Later on, she realises his kind nature and they both become friends.
Madhan is secretly a serial killer under the pseudonym "Manmadhan", who hunts and kills seemingly immoral girls in the city by seducing them before rendering them unconscious using chloroform. He burns the girls' corpses and stores their ashes in bottles with their respective names. Whenever he intends to kill a girl by seducing her, he suffers a nosebleed. In similar way he kills a psychiatrist, a girl in cafe, a train passenger and few other immoral girls. The media attention turns towards the case of missing girls, and Chennai's new ACP Deva takes the charge to find the person behind the crimes.
One day, Mythili finds Madhan riding a bike with a girl as pillion. On the next day, Mythili gets shocked to see the news that the girl whom she spotted with Madhan has gone missing. Mythili thinks that Madhan is behind the crimes in the city and informs Deva about Madhan's whereabouts. Thus, Madhan gets arrested.
During interrogation, Madhan reveals that his younger twin brother Madhan Raj is responsible for killing erotic and corrupt girls under the pseudonym Manmadhan. The story then moves to a flashback. Madhan Raj and Madhan Kumar lived with their maternal uncle Puncture Pandiyan in Madhampatty in the outskirts of Coimbatore district, as both of their parents had died years ago. While Kumar was brave, intelligent and practical, Raj was innocent and sentimental. While Kumar went to study for auditorship in Chennai, Raj moved to Coimbatore to study in an engineering college. There, he became very close and friendly with his hostel roommate Bobby, and fell in love with his classmate Vaishnavi, who also reciprocated his feelings upon seeing his good nature. However, Raj's senior friend Ravi informed him that Vaishnavi was having an illicit affair with her relative Seenu, studying in the same college. He did not trust him and in anger he beat up Ravi. When Raj confronted Vaishnavi, she reprimanded him for not trusting her.
Raj realised his mistake and went to Vaishnavi's house to apologise, only to witness her having sex with Seenu and enjoying the moment. He realised that Ravi was correct all along. Raj also overheard Vaishnavi's conversation with Seenu that she pretended to love him and would like to marry him so that she could take advantage of his innocence and sincere love, which would help her lead life the way she wanted, and have Raj as her slave. Raj confronted Vaishnavi, who attempted to cover up the situation. Not fooled, Raj killed her and Seenu. He returned to Chennai and bragged about the whole incident to Kumar. Unrepetant, Raj said he would set out in search of girls cheating in the name of love to kill them, and warned Kumar that if he informed the police, he would kill him too.
In the present, the police investigate further about Raj and get solid evidences against him. Kumar, with the help of Pandiyan, is released from the case. Mythili apologises to Kumar and also proposes to him, which he rejects, saying that he does not love her and had treated her as friend. Mythili leaves the place saying that she will wait for Kumar, believing that he will accept her love someday.
The story again moves to a flashback, where it is shown that Raj, after killing Vaishnavi and Seenu, did meet Kumar but did not threaten him. Instead he said he regretted killing them and he did it only because he was triggered due to what they were doing and committed suicide. Kumar hence decided to avenge Raj's death by killing girls who cheat in the name of love, under the pseudonym Manmadhan and developed his nosebleed from then on. Kumar has hidden Raj's death, thereby using his identity as a scapegoat so that he could escape if caught.
It is shown that Kumar indeed loves Mythili for her innocence and good demeanour, but cannot and will not express his feelings for her. He also declares that if his brother had loved a girl like her, he would also have lived happily and he would have married Mythili and be happy. Hence, Kumar concludes that avenging his brother's death is more important by killing immoral girls, and only God can judge his actions. The film ends with a message that even if Manmadhan has escaped the clutches of the police, he would answer for his actions before the law someday.
Production
Manmadhan is the directorial debut of A. J. Murugan. He said the script was initially pitched to Ajith Kumar in 1999, and Ajith, despite showing interest, asked Murugan to wait but never returned. In 2001, Murugan narrated the script to Silambarasan, who accepted. S. K. Krishnakanth, who agreed to produce the film, later told Murugan that Silambarasan wanted credit for the story and dialogues, and Silambarasan's mother Usha told Murugan he would only be allowed to continue as director if he credited her son for the story. Unwilling to jeopardise his career, Murugan complied. [8]
While assistant directors wanted to cast Vadivelu in a comedic role, Silambarasan favoured Santhanam after watching his performance on the comedy television series Lollu Sabha . [9] Bollywood actress Mandira Bedi was chosen to appear in a cameo while Czech model Yana Gupta was recruited for a dance number with both making their debut in Tamil. [10] [11] The first schedule was college scenes which were shot at NIFT in Chennai with around 2000 students. [12] [13] According to cinematographer R. D. Rajasekhar, Manmadhan was the first Tamil film to be colour corrected through digital technology which was done by Prasad EFX. [14] [15]
Silambarasan experienced difficulties with Murugan during production, and was widely reported by the media to have "ghost-directed" the film. [16] Murugan was later critical of the actor allegedly interfering with the project. [8] Separately, Goundamani was angered that Silambarasan edited out many of his scenes as he had signed on the film with the promise that his role was major. He was also discontent with Silambarasan's choice to cast Santhanam due to Lollu Sabha parodying and mocking films. [17] [18]
Release
Manmadhan received an A (adults only) certificate from the censor board with some cuts. [23] Though made on a high budget of ₹5 crore, [3] it was sold at a deficit to distributors. However, the film opened with 140 prints [24] and emerged successful despite facing competition from other Diwali releases such as Attahasam , Neranja Manasu and Chatrapathy . [25]
Critical reception
Sify wrote, "Manmathan is a taut thriller which engrosses the viewers with an engaging [narration], presentation, and is technically top class. [Silambarasan] has taken the audience by surprise with a good performance and contrary to his loud image that he had in films so far, he is a revelation". [26] Malathi Rangarajan of The Hindu wrote that Silambarasan's "impressive story telling skills find the right platform" in Manmadhan. She added, "The hero takes on the onus of story, screenplay and direction supervision for the first time and displays a reasonable level of maturity." [27] Malini Mannath of Chennai Online wrote, "Manmadhan is worth a watch, an engaging suspense thriller, a fare different from the routine romance-action flicks dished out to the audience." [28] Visual Dasan of Kalki wrote that, though reminiscent of many American films including The Bone Collector , the plot was full of unpredictable twists and turns, and impresses without knives and without blood. [29] Cinesouth wrote, "Though this movie is inspired by the films Sigappu Rojakkal and Manmadha Leelai , we can realize the efforts that had gone into the screenplay by Silambarasan to make it different. The film's richness is a tribute to the producer. The director Muruhan had used ultra modern equipments and technology in this film efficiently". [30] G. Ulaganathan of Deccan Herald wrote, "Though the film has shades of Kamal-Bharathi Raja's Sigappu Rojakkal, Manmadhan is Simbu's show all the way. [..] The major assets to the film are gripping narrative, good music by Yuvan Shankar Raja and Rajshekar's captivating camera". [31]
Box-office
According to Sify, the film's collection reports from Chennai, Coimbatore and Salem distribution territories indicated that it surged ahead of Attahasam in its second week due to "rave reviews in the media and word-of-mouth among the youth". [32]
