Major Chandrakanth

This was the epic movie that gave Sundarajan, the title 'Major'. With his outstanding performance, he was adressed with that title without serving in the army.
The star cast consists of Sundarajan (as he was known before the movie was a hit), Muthuraman, Nagesh, Jayalalitha and A.V.M.Rajan. Movie was directed by iyankunar sigaram K. Balachander and music by B.Kumar.
Chandrakanth is a retired army major, who is blind. He lives with his sons, Srikanth, an inspector and Rajnikanth, a student aspiring to join the army (as per wishes of his father). Rajni is sent to live in a hostel for his studies where he indulges in much vices - the biggest one being women.
Vimala is the sister of Mohan, a tailor. She studies in the college next to Rajni's and is popular as a singer and performer. As fate would have it, Rajni is interested in her as he was with many other girls and Vimala is soon pregnant.
As her brother is trying to get her married, she frantically tries to contact Rajni. With a mixup of names, the letter is read by Srikanth (this was a classic twist) and he tries to put Rajni on the right path. But Rajni treads wrongly and as a result Vimala commits suicide.
Mohan finds out about Rajni and in a moment of fury, kills him. Now he is a fugitive and ends up in Chandrakanth's home. The scenes at this part of the movie were memorable. Mohan doesn't know that Chandrakanth is actually the father of the man he had murdered, just a few hours back. Chandrakanth sympathizes with Mohan, when he hears his story, without knowing he is pitying his son's murderer.
When Chandrakanth gets to know of it, the truth is exchanged in bitterness. Srikanth arrives at that time. After an interesting banter of dialogues, the climax ends the movie.
I wouldn't say that the end of the movie was what the climax was. The end of the movie was just the end. There were multiple climaxes throughout. There wasn't much physical fighting and bashing in the movie, yet it had more action than a normal movie would have had. Having heard accolades of good words about the individual characters and the story of the movie, my expectations were sky rocketing and I wasn't disappointed.
Classic acting by handsome Sundarajan. No wonder he walked away with that title. The majesty and elegance with which he portrayed the character was commendable. Any actor is at their best with Balachander, but credit still goes to Major for his down - to - earth performance. It was almost a treat to watch his good looks and acting together. Rarely do those two characteristics come together.
Nagesh carried his character well as a broken man. He was not only the comedian in the first half of the movie but almost half of a hero in the second half. Although I did find Jayalalitha a disproportional sister to Nagesh - a chubby woman to a scrawny man, but it came out well, nevertheless.
Music was good, especially oru naal yaaro and kalyaana saapaadu podavaa. The rest of the songs are good to hear but not outstanding.
In short, it was a good show. Prepare for tissue box if you are sensitive, but worth the crying for such a good performance.