Billa

Billa, who runs an international criminal organisation, is killed in a police operation. The police keep it quiet, find an ordinary man named David who looks exactly like him, and put him in his place. David works his way inside. When things go wrong, the one officer who knew the truth is killed and there is nobody left who can prove who David is. Vishnu Varadhan directs. Ajith Kumar plays both Billa and David, with Nayanthara and Namitha. The lineage is layered. This is a remake of the 1980 Tamil film Billa, the picture that made Rajinikanth a star. That film was itself a remake of the 1978 Hindi film Don with Amitabh Bachchan. The chain runs across thirty years. For Ajith Kumar this was a return. He had taken a break, and this production changed his image: the bearded, grey haired, colder screen identity established here defined the rest of his career. Most of it was shot in Malaysia, and the film aimed at an international look that was unusual in Tamil cinema at the time. Who it is for: viewers who like Tamil action and star centred crime films. Who it is not for: the story is faithful to its original and predictable, and the female characters serve almost no function.