Maattrraan

K. V. Anand had been carrying the idea around since he read a magazine piece on Chang and Eng Bunker, the best-known conjoined twins of the 19th century. Years later it became 'Maattrraan', a Tamil action thriller released in 2012 in which Suriya plays, on his own, two brothers joined at the chest. The trick starts with the title: the word means something like "the other one", and the doubled letters in its spelling are a nod to the twins.

Akhilan and Vimalan share a single heart and not much else. Vimalan is studious, proper and socially minded. Akhilan likes a party and avoids books. Their father, Ramachandran, is a geneticist nobody wanted to fund who ended up making a fortune from Energion, a children's energy drink that sells all over India. Both of them notice Anjali, a Russian translator, and she picks Vimalan.

The peace holds until a Russian woman starts poking around the factory and lets slip that Energion's formula is hiding something ugly. Vimalan wants to get to the bottom of it and Akhilan doesn't believe a word, which is awkward when you can't walk away from your brother even to argue. After a fight at an amusement park, the trail ends up leading to a former Soviet republic and an Olympic Games held twenty years earlier.

Kajal Aggarwal is Anjali and Sachin Khedekar the father, with Tara as the mother. Anand wrote the script with the writing duo Subha, Harris Jayaraj did the music and Srinivas Mohan, who had done 'Enthiran', handled the effects on what was billed as the first Indian film to use performance capture. One of the songs was shot among the fjords of Norway. In the Telugu dub, called 'Brothers', one of the twins speaks with the voice of Karthi, Suriya's real-life brother.

AGS Entertainment released it on 12 October 2012. In the UK it entered that weekend's chart at number 13, taking £81,253 from twenty cinemas. Indian critics were split: nearly all of them praised Suriya and the first half, and nearly all complained about a scattered second half and a running time close to three hours, so much so that the producers trimmed it within days. Some compared it to 'Stuck on You', and Anand denied taking anything from a Hollywood film. Suriya went back to multiple roles in '24'.

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