Irudhi Suttru (Eng: Final Round) is a 2016 Indian Tamil-Hindi sports drama film written and directed by Sudha Kongara. Simultaneously shot in Tamil and Hindi, the film features R. Madhavan in the leading role as a boxing coach, with newcomer Ritika Singh as an aspiring boxer. Both 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 respectively. Featuring music composed by Santhosh Narayanan, 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 Irudhi Suttru and Saala Khadoos opened on 29 January 2016.
Prabhu Selvaraj (R. Madhavan) is a failed boxer, who despite being very talented, fell victim to the dirty politics in the boxing association. Ten years later, he is a coach for women’s boxing teams but is extremely angry and frustrated with the partiality in selection. Due to his rift with the association head Dev Khatri (Zakir Hussain), he is falsely charged for sexual harassment and transferred to Chennai. Despite the very poor infrastructure, Prabhu manages to find talent in a road side fish seller Madhi (Ritika Singh), who he notices while thrashing the judges during her sister’s tournament.
Ignoring Madhi’s elder sister Luxmi (Mumtaz Sorcar) who has been boxing for 8 years, Prabhu offers to train Madhi for few hours daily. But the two don’t get along, due to Prabhu’s ruthless training methods and Madhi’s aggressive nature. As a result, Madhi intentionally loses a local level match. Prabhu later asks Luxmi and Madhi’s parents, Saamikannu (Kaali Venkat) and Damayanthi (Baljinder Kaur), to send them to stay in hostel with him, so their daughters can work hard on training. Madhi misunderstands him, but later regrets when she finds out that Prabhu has sold his bike to buy new training equipment for her. Madhi then dedicatedly starts training with Prabhu and develops feelings for him. On a day of a qualifying match, she reveals her feelings to Prabhu, and he promptly rejects her. During the warm-up before the match, a now jealous Luxmi injures Madhi’s hand, causing Madhi to lose. 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 heavy weight Russian boxer, who knocks out Madhi in a few seconds. 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 for false theft charges.
Prabhu comes to the rescue and bails her out. He later takes Madhi to Delhi to get her wild card entry into World Boxing Championship. Many people in the association including Luxmi, accuse Madhi of offering sexual favors to Prabhu. Ignoring all the accusations Madhi works hard and goes on to win the semi-final. On the day of finals, Dev removes Madhi’s name from the list and asks Prabhu to resign immediately, if he wants to see Madhi in final. Madhi gets to fight in the final round but is dejected after learning about Prabhu’s resignation. She kept on losing points in 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. Madhi follows the game plan and knocks out the opponent. Dev quickly jumps in the ring to take the credit of training Madhi, but she punches him and runs to Prabhu. Madhi and Prabhu hug each other, showing emotional reunion of a coach and student.
Directed by Sudha Kongara
Produced by S. Sashikanth & C. V. Kumar
Written by Sudha Kongara & Arun Matheshwaran (Tamil dialogues)
Screenplay by Sudha Kongara & Sunanda Raghunathan
Story by Sudha Kongara
Starring Madhavan, Ritika Singh, Mumtaz Sorcar, Nassar
Music by Santhosh Narayanan
Cinematography Sivakumar Vijayan
Edited by Sathish Suriya
Production Y NOT Studios, UTV Motion Pictures & Thirukumaran Entertainment
Distributed by Dream Factory (Tamil Nadu) AP International (Worldwide)
Release dates 29 January 2016
Running time 109 minutes
Country India
Language Tamil / Hindi
