Kurudhippunal (1995)

Kamalahasan’s Tamil remake of Nihalani’s Drohkaal (1994). The original story, featuring the conflict between a cop and a terrorist, is reformulated with allusions to CPI(ML) rebels in Tamil Nadu. The relocation involves an even more sensational melodrama, exemplified by blowing up a bus full of school children singing Sare jahan se achha (a hymn valorizing the Indian nation), as well as Kamalahasan’s own further psychologisation of the Om Puri role. Arjun plays the Naseeruddin Shah character and Nasser the dreaded terrorist Bhadra (Ashish Vidyarthi in the original). In remaking a familiar and extensively distributed Hindi film, Kurudhippunal reverses the trend of translating local language hits into biggerbudget Hindi movies for a nationwide audience, indicating how the success of Mani Rathnam’s Tamil films changed the industry’s view of cultural imperatives. The film was dubbed into Telugu as Drohi.