Gentleman (1993 film)

In Ooty, Krishnamoorthy alias Kicha and his sidekick Mani perform a swashbuckling heist of money of several crores while being in disguise diverting the attention of police, and escape in Nilgiri Mountain Railway, much to the frustration of a chasing police officer named Ratnam.

Kicha is a respected citizen who runs a home-based papadum business along with Mani in Madras. Susheela, one of Kicha's many female employees, has a crush on him and is constantly demanding his attention. Another thing adding to her woes is the arrival of her jovial cousin Sugandhi. She makes the place so lively and playful with silly fights between Mani and Babloo. Sugandhi later develops a crush on Kicha, especially after being saved by him from some molesting goons. Kicha tells to her that he has no such feelings for her and wants her to find a suitable husband. Before leaving Madras, Sugandhi steals Kicha's ring as a souvenir.

After several unsuccessful attempts at nabbing the thief, a disgraced Azhagar Nambi shaves his head and is left with a ring mark on his face, after a scuffle with the thief. He investigates the design of the mark, believing it was formed by a ceremonial ring worn by Brahmin priests, but to his vain, finds that the such a design is uncommon to Brahmin priests, but rather resembles a mangala sutra. Nambi is forced by his parents into getting married and by coincidence to Sugandhi, from whom he gets the particular ring that he was tracking and finds out that it belongs to Kicha. In an attempt to trap and arrest Kicha, Nambi plots an attempt at Kicha's house where they were invited for a wedding dinner, hosted by Kicha, where he shoots Kicha, but the latter narrowly escapes with a bullet injury in his hand, along with Mani. Susheela follows them to their hideout, where Susheela finds the duo and accuses Kicha for his deed.

After Susheela threatens to commit suicide, Kicha reveals his past: as a student he was a district level topper along with his best friend Ramesh, and when they both were denied their desired medical college seats due to bribery, that led to the suicides of Kicha's mother and Ramesh. Since then, Kicha became a thief to build a college of his own, where he desires to make education available to the deserved without any difference to poor, rich, or any caste.

In order to fund the final stages of the college building, aware of the police trap, Kicha makes one last attempt to steal money from the Chief Minister, resulting in success, but Nambi gains the upper hand in arresting him. In the courtroom, Kicha demands that the State CM should come to the courtroom, who was previously educational minister demanded the bribe from him. Though the CM is exposed to the public, he is still let off, which infuriates a youth who was inspired by Kicha's ideologies. The youth kills the minister in a suicide bombing.

Six years later, Kicha and Mani, having completed their jail sentence, inaugurate Kicha's college.

After scoring back-to-back successes like Vasanthakala Paravai (1991) and Surieyan (1992), producer K. T. Kunjumon of A. R. S. Film International wanted to collaborate again with director Pavithran and actor R. Sarathkumar; however since they went on to do other projects, the collaboration did not happen. Photographer Stills Ravi and editor V. T. Vijayan suggested the name of S. Shankar who worked as an assistant in these two films. Impressed with Shankar's story, he decided to produce the film, Gentleman. While Shankar also wrote the screenplay, Kunjumon selected Balakumaran to write the dialogues.[2]

Shankar wanted Kamal Haasan to play the lead role, but he refused because of the politics shown in the story and felt "it was not the right position to take on the subject".[11] When Arjun was approached, he too was reluctant. According to him, no directors wanted to make a film with him until the success of Sevagan (1992) which was directed by Arjun himself. Therefore when Shankar approached him with the script of Gentleman, he decided to decline without listening to the script just as he did to a few other directors. But he listened to the script after much persuasion and, impressed by the story, decided to do it.[12][13]

The climax scene where a student kills the antagonist in a suicide bombing was inspired from the assassination of Sri Lankan president Ranasinghe Premadasa.[2][14] Kunjumon insisted Shankar to rewrite the climax by adding this element, much to the dissatisfaction of Arjun, who felt that his heroism would get diluted. However, Kunjumon was adamant about the climax and it was shot as per his wish.[2]

The score and soundtrack of the movie was composed by A. R. Rahman and lyrics by Vairamuthu and Vaali.[15] Gentleman marked the beginning of a famed collaboration between A. R. Rahman and director S. Shankar. The film and soundtrack were dubbed and released in Telugu with the same name. The lyrics were penned by Rajashri for this version.[16]

A Gentleman instrumental adaptation album was subsequently released on Lahari and became a runaway success. The track "Ottagathai Kattiko" soundtracked a BBC fashion show. The song is set in the Carnatic raga Dharmavati,[17] and "Paakathe" is set in Mohanam.[18]

Gentleman was released on 30 July 1993.[19] Kunjumon had to distribute the film on his own since no distributors were willing to buy this film as they felt "it looked like a dubbed film" Despite this, it became a major commercial success,[2] running for over 175 days in theatres.[20]

In the 2019 Tamil film Hero, Arjun reprises his role as Sathyamoorthy (whose name is similar to Krishnamoorthy), a man who takes away money from the rich to build a school that is free for everyone.[25]

• Dhananjayan, G. (2011). The Best of Tamil Cinema, 1931 to 2010: 1977–2010. Galatta Media. ISBN 978-81-921043-0-0.

• Gentleman at IMDb
• Gentleman at Rotten Tomatoes
• Gentleman at Complete Index to World Film