Vasool Raja MBBS

Saran's 2004 Tamil film is a remake of the Hindi Munna Bhai MBBS and stays fairly close to its source. A tough called Rajaraman enrols in medical college to fulfil his father's dream, ignores the rules, applies his own methods in the hospital and comes up against the dean, Vishwanathan. The idea at the centre is that the distance medicine keeps from people is itself the problem. Kamal Haasan's reading differs from Sanjay Dutt's in the source film: less soft, more sardonic. The dean played by Prakash Raj keeps the opposing figure from being one-dimensional. The remake's difficulty is that it loses some of the original's emotional naturalness and lets the comic sections run long. Even so, bringing the hospital and the theme of compassion into a popular Tamil frame works. Who it's for: viewers interested in Kamal Haasan's comic work and in Indian remakes. Who it's not for: anyone who has seen the original and will compare, or who cares about medical realism.