Thalapathi

An Indian drama. A woman gives birth very young and leaves the baby beside a train. The child is found and grows up in another family. Grown, Surya is known in his neighbourhood. He is good in a fight, afraid of nobody, and steps in where he sees injustice. One day he comes up against the powerful man of the district. The fight turns into a friendship; Devaraj takes him in and the two become inseparable. From there the film is a story about loyalty: Surya is now part of an order, and that order stands outside the law while enforcing a justice of its own. Then a new district officer arrives and stands against it. There is also a woman: the mother who left her child years ago is now this man's mother. That knowledge sits at the centre. Who is whose son, who is whose brother, and when the truth comes out nobody can change their place. The shape is built on an epic. The film carries the story of Karna from the Mahabharata into the present: a man born without standing who stays loyal to the one person who accepted him. Rajinikanth plays Surya and Mammootty plays Devaraj. Arvind Swamy, Shobana and Srividya are in the cast. The music is by Ilaiyaraaja and counts as the most remembered thing about the film. Mani Ratnam wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes epic Indian drama and stories built on friendship. Who it is not for: anyone troubled by violence being exalted; the film plainly finds the man who enforces his own justice to be right.