Muthu

K. S. Ravikumar's 1995 Tamil film is a remake of the Malayalam Thenmavin Kombath; Rajinikanth asked for the screenplay to be written without watching the original, and the result was rebuilt around the expectations of Tamil audiences. Muthu is the loyal charioteer of a wealthy landowner; when the two fall for the same woman, the dancer and actress Ranganayaki, and the master's uncle moves to seize the estate, the order breaks. What is genuinely interesting is what happened in Japan: released there in 1998 as Dancing Maharaja, it ran a hundred days across fifty screens and became the highest-grossing Indian film in Japan to that point. It is still regarded as the highest-grossing Indian film there and is cited as the beginning of Rajinikanth fandom in the country. A. R. Rahman's score played a large part in that journey. Who it's for: viewers interested in Rajinikanth's cinema, the 1990s Tamil mainstream, and how Indian films travel abroad. Who it's not for: anyone troubled by the position of the woman character in the story, or who will find a runtime past three hours excessive.