Looking via a hazy automobile window, a dreamy younger man with a fascinating grin enters Ooty. There aren’t any slow-motion observe pictures or customary hero introduction cues. He comes like a breeze, beams at his woman love, dances effortlessly, and leaves with out a lot hint. 20 years on, Sachein is now returning to the large display, once more in that long-sleeved maroon sweater and beige cargo pants, and this time, he guarantees to make his presence felt. Amidst all of the movies respiratory recent air on this re-release season, Tamil celebrity Vijay’s forty first movie is probably the most in-demand entrant. Sachein, directed by John Mahendran, is being formally re-released this week.
Salem-based auditor and ardent Vijay fan Vicky Vijay doesn’t skip a beat whereas speaking about his plans to catch the re-release. “I still remember the day Sachein was released. My father is a die-hard superstar fan, and he wanted to watch Chandramukhi,” — Rajinikanth’s movie, in addition to Kamal Haasan’s Mumbai Xpress, launched together with Sachein; we’ll get to that in a bit — “However, I was too adamant that we watch the Vijay film. It was a jolly aana Vijay padam, especially thanks to his comedy scenes with Vadivelu, a duo that was popular from Friends,” says Vicky.
Producer Kalaipuli S Thanu of V Creations, who’s re-releasing the 4K restoration, was extra nervous than the followers 20 years in the past. “We were extremely tense. So we wanted music composer Devi Sri Prasad to remix a Telugu song of his in Sachein, and we had even bought the rights. I don’t know what really happened, but it caused quite a stir. Newspapers read ‘Sachein release halted,’ and I was shocked. The court said we hadn’t obtained the rights properly.” Fascinatingly, Thanu explains, DSP composed a complete new tune that matches the tune’s lip sync. That ended up being ‘Dai Dai Dai Kattikkoda,’ that includes Vijay and Bipasha Basu, which was added to the movie every week after the discharge.
That’s not all. Theatre house owners had been sceptical of the discharge and hesitated to purchase the movie. (*20*) reminisces Thanu.
Kalaipuli S Thanu
| Photo Credit:
Shivaraj Vedhan
But what prompted Thanu to re-release Sachein after 20 years, particularly in a 4K remastered model with a 7.1 Dolby combine? Thanu, who beforehand re-released Aalavandhan and is working in the direction of remastering Khakha Khakha and Kandukondain Kandukondain, says that he has been witnessing the demand for Sachein’s re-release over the years. “Many theatre owners have repeatedly requested me to rerelease Sachein, stating that there’s immense demand among fans. Moreover, my anti-piracy team has been continuously taking down pirated copies of Sachein; even last night, at 3 AM, an HD-quality print was uploaded, and we had to take it down. And by the time we take down a print, it’s getting over 10,000 views. That’s just amazing,” says Thanu, mentioning that over 9,500 tickets have been pre-booked for the Friday reveals of Sachein in Rohini Silver Screens, Chennai. “I am shocked because even new films struggle to get such pre-release bookings.” The launch isn’t restricted to Tamil Nadu. Thanu says the movie is about to play at over 40 screens in France, 80 within the US, and over 300 theatres in Malaysia.
To some filmgoers, like 28-year-old Chennai-based engineer Madhesh R, this demand appears mindboggling. “Until a few years ago, I wasn’t aware that Sachein had such a fan following. I have seen fans calling it an underrated Vijay film, but the craze we are seeing online is surprising,” says Madhesh, who is raring to catch the re-release to decipher this phenomenon. But with Madhesh, we surprise if a mean filmgoer would have ever seen Sachein as a movie that could possibly be revisited on the large display.
“The demand is such because films like Sachein and Ghilli are films loved even by those who dislike Vijay’s other films,” explains Vicky. “You would find many who say, ‘I don’t usually watch Vijay’s films, but I liked Ghilli, Sachein, and Thuppakki.’ Even Vaseegara, which didn’t run well, would fall under this. I have never seen Sachein as a strictly fan-favourite film, but one for all moviegoers,” he believes.
Thanu concurs. “All those who were five or ten years old when the film was originally released would now get a chance to celebrate it on the big screen. I foresee a lot of college-goers and young women thronging the theatres over this weekend,” he says.
Vadivelu and Vijay in a still from ‘Sachein’
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
Sachein, a ‘mystery’ of affection
As Madhesh believes, the demand for the movie should trip quite a bit on its comedy. Veteran comic Vadivelu as Ayyasaamy was hilarious within the movie, delivering many iconic traces like “Nangooram madhiri nachunu irundhucha?” and “First’u juice’u.” It could be secure to say that Vadivelu takes quite a lot of credit score for the success of Sachein, in the course of the launch and probably in the course of the re-release. But once more, given the recognition of the comedy tracks on tv and YouTube, calling it the only real cause for the demand for re-release appears imprecise. Moreover, Thanu subtly hints that he needed to take away a couple of bits from the movie to make the content material extra amenable to trendy audiences and “not hurt any sentiments.” It is secure to imagine that he’s referring to the numerous double entendres within the movie.
In some ways, Sachein defies every little thing we assume is requisite for a movie to face the take a look at of time, or to be revisited by the lots on the large display. First and foremost, it’s neither a industrial actioner like, say, Thirupaachi, nor does it have the re-watch worth of a Ghilli. Sure, it has 5 dance numbers and Vijay delivers his fair proportion of fan service — references to Youth, Kushi (that iduppu joke!) and Thirupaachi (for those who watched Good Bad Ugly and thought such references had been a brand new factor, even Genelia will get a callback to Boys, and Santhanam to his debut Manmathan). Vijay will get two satisfactory battle sequences and even breaks the fourth wall many occasions. But it’s secure to say that Sachein isn’t beloved for any of that.
“I still wonder how Vijay got the idea to do such a film after becoming a full-on action hero, after films like Thirumalai, Ghilli, Madhurey and Thirupaachi; his very next film after Sachein was an actioner like Sivakasi. So he need not have done it. In fact, after this film, he returned to that genre only in 2011 with Kaavalan,” ponders Vicky.
Thanu sheds extra mild: “I wanted Vijay thambi to do a film like Kushi because he had just done a series of action films. When John narrated the script to me, I really liked it. Then I told thambi that it would be great to do a light-hearted subject like Kushi. He was immediately on board with the idea. I sent John to narrate the story to him, and he immediately called and said that he found the pitch as entertaining as Kushi.”
Even as a romance drama, Sachin, which got here with the tagline ‘miracle of love,’ isn’t a Kushi. The romance observe, between Sachein and Genelia D’Souza’s Shalini, isn’t as transferring as a Priyamaanavale or a Shahjahan. It is a kind of breezy, laid-back flicks, with nothing drastically dramatic transpiring in its 150-minute runtime. “It was all pre-planned; we didn’t want it to be as emotional as a Kushi,” says Thanu.
A still from ‘Sachein’
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
To his credit score, John will need to have actually nailed the narration. Sachein was loosely impressed by the director’s Telugu movie Neetho, which sadly turned out to be unsuccessful. Thankfully, Sachein appeared splendidly slicker and sharper than Neetho. The movie, fascinatingly, was centred on the central character and never on the plot. In truth, it wouldn’t be too far-fetched to say that the movie is a kind of uncommon makes an attempt at character examine in Vijay’s filmography. The movie tells the story of a chirpy, exuberant faculty boy with a love for all and a manner as tender because the frames he’s painted on. We don’t know a lot about his previous for a significant chunk of the movie, besides that he often drops hints that he misses his mom.
From the lens of 2025, Sachein might not be a male function mannequin of romance; a lot of the movie follows how he makes use of a form of reverse psychology to woo Shalini, however this was a time when heroes had been busy chasing after heroines with their thorny hearts. Sachein believed in falling in love at first sight and made an admirable, if a tad too romanticised, case for it. John’s story, on the coronary heart of it, asks a query women and men have spent eternity questioning: Is love one thing that simply occurs, or is it one thing that blooms solely whenever you perceive another person? “Am I a motorbike? To check the petrol consumption and resale value before buying it? It’s love; it just happens. I won’t lie that you are my dream girl. You have your share of flaws, but I still like you,” says Sachein at a pivotal second, calling his tendency to simply accept folks with their flaws a ‘manufacturing defect.’ To the lovelorn boys of the 2000s, Sachein taught find out how to gracefully settle for rejection and to seek for what he calls the purest of joys. “Any happiness that doesn’t harm someone else isn’t wrong. But even if a small smile hurts someone else, it’s wrong.”
Fascinatingly, Sachein can be fairly an atypical faculty romance. Instead of the same old campus rom-coms, set inside corridors and school rooms, it advised of a romance that any strange boy sitting in a university canteen would have wished for himself, of a fantasy imagined in a world outdoors these classroom home windows. “That’s how you stand out, isn’t it? Showing the classrooms would have been ordinary,” says Thanu.
There are different highlights, like that fog that permeates virtually each body of the movie, generally even indoors. Thanu credit the late cinematographer Jeeva with that artistic name. “He wanted to capture the climate of the hills, and even John, while narrating the story, said that he wished to transport the audience to a chilly hill station.”
A still from ‘Sachein’
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
An enthralling Vijay and his trend-setting costume design:
In one of many candy moments of Sachein, a younger lady calls Vijay’s smile cute, to which he blushes sheepishly. Again, this was a time when audiences didn’t time period such indulgences as cringeworthy. Every minute of the 150-minute Sachein may characteristic Vijay with that glowing grin, photos of which proceed to be on the show photos of many Vijay followers. This is definitely some of the charming Vijays we’ve seen on display. “Even everyone at Vijay thambi’s house would agree with that. They all love this film,” says Thanu. Like Shalini would inform Bipasha’s Manju in a later second, “his smile is definitely a problem.”
The movie is equally remembered for its trend-setting costume design. Sachein, together with Suriya’s Ghajini, turned long-sleeved sweaters into a vogue assertion amongst Tamil youth. “I started wearing those full-zipped sweaters only after Sachein. Similarly, many started wearing a shirt inside a sweater; of course, wearing a shirt within a shirt has been the trend since Rajinikanth, but even now, when we go to a hill station, we instinctively choose Sachein as our dress code.” From the highest of his thoughts, Vicky recollects Vijay’s white sweater from ‘Va Va Va En Thalaiva,’ reminiscing about how he purchased pink cargo pants after the star’s costume within the ‘Vaadi Vaadi’ tune.
A still from ‘Sachein’
| Photo Credit:
Kalaipuli S Thanu/YouTube
A memorable partnership with Sunfeast, and a conflict with the titans
While recollecting the times forward of the discharge, Vicky mentions the way it was the recognition of ‘Va Va Va En Thalaiva’ and ‘Vaadi Vaadi’ on the radio that generated a lot of the movie’s hype. “Those days, we knew about a film’s release only through posters, television commercials or songs. A major attraction was the labels we got along with Sunfeast biscuits.” Thanu, recognized for his advertising methods, had partnered with ITC Limited, which owns Sunfeast. “We even had a competition in our neighbourhood on who collected all the freebie stickers we got with the biscuit,” provides Vicky.
This isn’t simply random trivia. Sachein featured a number of, not-so-subtle product placements, and to a technology of filmgoers, the snack virtually grew to become synonymous with Vijay’s picture on the labels. “For Kandukondain Kandukondain, we had partnered with Fair and Lovely. So the success of that campaign led to such a partnership for Sachein,” says Thanu, including that the remastered model could not characteristic these tie-ins.
Remember we talked about how Sachein clashed with Rajinikanth’s Chandramukhi and Kamal Haasan’s Mumbai Xpress? Even right now, Sachein is broadly remembered as that Vijay movie that ran for over 200 days regardless of taking up a goliath in Chandramukhi. For Thanu, it was out of the query to not launch on that date; he stresses how they’d introduced the discharge date even earlier than the movie went on flooring. “We need to make good on our promise and release the film on the date we had announced. That’s where a banner’s pride rests. So our focus was on getting it ready to release in April.” He reminds coolly that he has all the time been a daring producer. “Remember when Thalapathy and Guna were released on the same day? My film, Vanna Vanna Pookkal, directed by Balu Mahendra, too released on the same day and ran for 129 days,” he recollects.
Instead of combating shy of competitors, Thanu doubled down on publicity. “Amongst the three films that were released that day, only ours had over 200 banners across the city. If you had visited Sangam Cinemas, you would have seen a huge banner of Sachein. I tried different poster sizes so our film would stand out amongst the other two. Vijay thambi used to observe all that, and sometimes he would text me saying, ‘Sir, this is a bit too much.’(laughs)”
Vijay may need bid goodbye to cinema — the actor-turned-politician introduced that his upcoming movie could be his final — however the reception he’s anticipated to get this Friday says that someplace, within the hearts of followers, lovelorn youth and males who wish to stay within the consolation of their childhood reminiscences, Sachein lives on. Wearing a darkish pink sweater and beige pants, he’s still driving his cycle on the chilly slopes of Ooty, still whispering ‘Main kya karoon?’ to Shalini.
Published – April 17, 2025 08:31 pm IST
