Irudhi Suttru (transl. Final round) is a 2016 Indian sports drama film written and directed by Sudha Kongara. Filmed simultaneously in Tamil and Hindi languages with the latter named as Saala Khadoos (transl. The Snob), the film features R. Madhavan in the leading role as a boxing coach, with newcomer Ritika Singh as an aspiring boxer. Both the Tamil and Hindi versions are produced by S. Sashikanth for Y NOT Studios and UTV Motion Pictures, while C. V. Kumar’s Thirukumaran Entertainment co-produces the Tamil version and Madhavan’s Tricolour Films with Rajkumar Hirani present the Hindi version.
Featuring music composed by Santhosh Narayanan, with background score by Sanjay Wandrekar and Atul Raninga (for the Hindi version), the film has cinematography by Sivakumar Vijayan and editing by Sathish Suriya. After beginning pre-production works in early 2013, the film began shoot in July 2014 and was shot within fifty days. Both versions Irudhi Suttru and Saala Khadoos opened on 29 January 2016 and received critical acclaim.[1] The film was later remade by Sudha Kongara herself in Telugu language as Guru (2017) with several members of the cast reprising their respective roles and Venkatesh playing Madhavan’s role.
Plot
Prabhu Selvaraj is a talented yet failed boxer who, despite being very gifted in boxing, falls victim to the dirty politics in the boxing association, and loses his chance to go to ’96 Olympics. 15 years later, he is a government coach for the national women’s boxing training academy but is always extremely angry with lethargic attitude of boxers and frustrated with the partiality in selection. Due to his constant rift with the association head Dev Khatri, he is falsely charged with sexual harassment in Delhi and gets transferred to Chennai to identify and develop new women boxers. Despite the very poor infrastructure, Prabhu/Adi manages to find natural talent in a roadside fish seller named Ezhil Madhi, who he notices while she is thrashing the judges during her sister’s tournament.
Ignoring Madhi’s elder sister Lakshmi who has been boxing for eight years to get a sports quota government job, Prabhu offers to pay and train Madhi for a few hours daily. Unfortunately, the two do not get along due to Prabhu’s/Adi’s ruthless training methods and Madhi’s aggressive nature. As a result, Madhi intentionally loses a local match. Prabhu later asks Lakshmi and Madhi’s parents, Saamikannu and Damayanthi, to send them to stay in a hostel with him so that their daughters can work hard on training. Madhi misunderstands him but later regrets when she finds out that Prabhu has sold his beloved bike to buy new training equipment for her. Madhi then starts training with Prabhu and develops feelings for him. On the day of a qualifying match, she reveals her feelings to Prabhu, but he promptly rejects her. During the warm-up before the match, a now jealous Lakshmi injures Madhi’s hand, causing Madhi to lose the chance to Olympics. Angry, Prabhu thinks that Madhi lost intentionally again and throws her out of training camp.
Dev takes advantage of the situation by calling Madhi to Delhi for a cultural exchange tournament and makes her fight with a heavyweight Russian boxer, who knocks out Madhi in a 30 seconds. A demotivated Madhi is then approached by Dev with an indecent proposal, to which she reacts by injuring him. Dev takes revenge by getting her arrested on false theft charges.
Prabhu comes to the rescue and bails her out. He later takes Madhi to Delhi to get her a wild-card entry into the World Boxing Championship, to be held in Goa 2 months later. Many people in the association, including Lakshmi, accuse Madhi of offering sexual favours to Prabhu. Ignoring all the accusations, Madhi works hard, enters the tournament representing India and goes on to win the semifinal. One hour before finals, Dev refuses to sign Madhi’s boxer entry to the match and blackmails Prabhu to resign immediately if he wants to see Madhi in the final, with the same Russian boxer who knocked her out in Delhi. Prabu resigns from his government job, and Madhi gets to fight in the final round. she is dejected after learning about Prabhu’s resignation. She keeps losing points in the early rounds and gets badly injured before Prabhu shows up at the stadium and indicates her to attack her opponent’s arms to make her weak as Genghis Khan did to his enemies. Madhi follows the game plan and knocks out the opponent with seconds to go in the final round. Dev quickly jumps into the ring to take the credit for training Madhi, but she heavily punches him and runs to Prabhu. Madhi and Prabhu hug each other, showing their emotional reunion.
Cast
Madhavan as Prabhu Selvaraj (Tamil) / Adi Tomar (Hindi)
Ritika Singh as Ezhil Madhi
Mumtaz Sorcar as Luxmi
Nassar as “Punch” Pandian
Radha Ravi as Muralikrishnan (Tamil version)
M. K. Raina (Hindi version)
Zakir Hussain as Dev Khatri
Kaali Venkat as Saamikannu (Samuel)
Baljinder Kaur as Damayanthi
Venkatesan Devarajan as Referee
Sanchana Natarajan as Boxing Student
Bipin as Innocent
Ravindra Vijay
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