Bale Pandiya (2010 film)

Bale Pandiya
Bale Pandiya
Soundtrack album by Devan Ekambaram
Released	18 April 2010
Genre	Feature film soundtrack
Length	31:29
Label	SonyMusicSouthVEVO
Producer	Devan Ekambaram

Bale Pandiya
Bale Pandiya
Directed by	Siddharth Chandrasekhar
Written by	Siddharth Chandrasekhar
Produced by	Kalpathi S. Aghoram; Kalpathi S. Ganesh; Kalpathi S. Suresh
Starring	Vishnu Vishal; Piaa Bajpai
Cinematography	Soundarrajan
Edited by	Shiva Saravanan
Music by	Devan Ekambaram
Production; company	AGS Entertainment
Release date	3 September 2010;
Running time	140 minutes
Country	India
Language	Tamil
Budget	$3 million

Bale Pandiya (transl. Bravo Pandiya) is a 2010 Tamil action comedy film written and directed by Siddharth Chandrasekhar. It stars Vishnu Vishal and Piaa Bajpai in the lead roles. The film was released on 3 September 2010 with mixed reviews. The movie is based on the 1990 movie I Hired a Contract Killer.

Plot

Contract killer AKP (R. Amarendran) and his two sidekicks (one of which is a driver that does a full 360-degree flip from the car window and opens the door, allowing AKP to exit from the passenger seat) arrive at a club. The group walks into the club and starts showing their power before reaching their table. A finger with a ring is placed on the table. Pandian (Vishnu Vishal) considers himself unlucky. All his efforts to come up in life end on the wrong side. He approaches AKP and urges to kill him. A shocked AKP is initially hesitant. Soon, he decides to give him some time. Hence, he gives Pandian some money and entrusts him with the job of turning a human bomb, a job that he should execute within 20 days. Life changes for Pandian after he meets Vaishnavi (Piaa Bajpai). They fall in love with each other. When Pandian decides to go tell AKP that he would rather prefer to live, he gets a rude shock: AKP and his men are found murdered. The blame falls on Pandian. Meanwhile, Vaishnavi gets kidnapped by a gang for a big deal. It is chaos and confusion everywhere, before Pandian sets things right.

Cast

Vishnu Vishal as Pandiya
Piaa Bajpai as Vaishnavi
R. Amarendran as AKP
Vivek as London
Gibran Osman as Kachitham
Appukutty as Kachitham's assistant
John Vijay as Pasupathy
Jayaprakash as Vannaiyar
Dr. Sharmila as Pandiya's mother
Gadam Kishan as Raju
Vijay Sethupathi as Pandiya's brother
Pandu
Vaiyapuri
Aarthi
Nellai Siva
Cell Murugan as Thirupathi
Rangammal

Guest appearances in "Happy" song by: (in alphabetical order)

Production

The film marked the directorial debut of leading advertising designer Siddharth Chandrasekhar. The filming was held at Phuket, Pondicherry and Chennai. The song "Happy" featured 20 playback singers in cameo appearances.^[1]

Soundtrack

Songs composed by Devan Ekambaram. The song "Happy" is based on "Happy Indru Mudhal" from Ooty Varai Uravu (1967).

No.	Title	Lyrics	Singers	Length
1.	"Sirikkiren"	Vaali	Naresh Iyer, Mano, Sirkazhi G. Sivachidambaram, Burn, Uma Shankar	5:05
2.	"Happy"	Vaali	Malaysia Vasudevan, Haricharan, Devan Ekambaram, Naresh Iyer, Naveen Madhav, Ranjith, Rahul Nambiar, Paravai Muniamma, Manicka Vinayagam, Anuradha Sriram, Srinivas, Mukesh, Divya, Suchitra Karthik, Velmurugan, Malgudi Subha, Vijay Yesudoss, Aalap Raju	4:59
3.	"Aaradha Kobamillai"	Thamarai	Raman Mahadevan, Mahalakshmi Iyer	4:48
4.	"Ivan Thedal"	Dr. Burn	Dr. Burn, Arun Ramamurthi	3:39
5.	"Kangalae Kamalalayam"	Thamarai	P. Unnikrishnan, Mrinalini	4:06
6.	"Bale Pandiya"	Vaali	Velumurugan, Ranjith, Naresh Iyer	4:27
7.	"Sirikkiren" (Instrumental)		Arun Ramamurthi	5:05
Total length:				31:29

Critical reception

Behindwoods rated the film 2 out of 5 and mentioned "The attempts of director Siddharth appear fresh and there are touches of his ad world experience in a few scenes. [..] However, Siddharth has not held the screen play tightly through out and loses his grasp especially towards the end. The film seems to drag on with a meandering narration in the latter half".^[2] Rediff wrote "Sidharth Chandrasekar's debut film hits the right note at certain places, and it certainly has its funny moments. If it had sustained that momentum in the second half, Bale Pandiya would have been even better".^[3] Sify mentioned that "The trouble with Bale Pandiya is that the director just do not know whether to make a spoof or a comedy with songs and action, in the process he falls between two stools" and called it "half baked and contrived".^[4]

References

^ "Helming Bale Pandiya". Rediff. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
^ "BALE PANDIYA MOVIE REVIEW". www.behindwoods.com. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
^ Srinivasan, Pavithra. "Bale Pandiya could have been better". Rediff. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
^ "Bale Pandiya". Sify. Archived from the original on 24 December 2015.