wed Vijay Kumar, a Black Cat commando, leads a team to rescue tourists held hostage by terrorists in
Kashmir. After the mission, Vijay meets his girlfriend, Tejaswini "Teju," a news presenter, and they plan
to marry. Teju reveals she is pregnant, sharing her HCG report with Vijay. Meanwhile, Vijay decides to
visit his twin brother Nanda Kumar, also known as Nandu, who has been confined to a mental asylum
for murdering their stepmother, Jayanthi.Nandu, a schizophrenic with paranoid delusions, has spent
most of his life in the asylum. Despite Vijay's care for his brother, the doctor warns that Nandu poses a
danger to society. Vijay and Teju visit Nandu to inform him of their wedding, but Nandu begins to
perceive Teju as Jayanthi. Believing he must save Vijay, Nandu escapes the asylum after killing two
inmates, Sulthan and Paasha, leaving no evidence of his whereabouts. Nandu later confronts his
maternal uncle, who had a role in his incarceration, causing the man to choke and die from the sh
a After completing the draft for the film's script with alterations in early 2002, Haasan approached the
Malayalam filmmaker Priyadarshan to direct it. The two men were keen to work together since the
latces.[23] Sundar C came in as a replacement to work on the film.[24] Anbe Sivam was co-produced and
distributed by V. Swaminathan, K. Muralitharan and G. Venugopal under the production banner of
Lakshmi Movie Makeright-wing political belief. Haasan had wanted to act in the film alongside Mohanlal,
but Ravikumar refused the opportunity, saying it was not his usual film genre of expertise.[19] Haasan
and Ravikumar instead moved on to work on a different project titled Thenali (2000) and chose to make
the film's title character a Sri Lankan Tamil as discussed in the earlier script.[20]Sri Lankan Tamil
communist, while the other was a person who folloCast and crewRamanan of Planet Bollywood rated
the film 5.5 out of 10, saying, "The film falls flat on its face because of its failure in the two most
important departments of filmmaking – scriptwriting, and direction [...] It almost seems as if Kamal
Haasan and Suresh Krishna were high on drugs In addition to being the film's writer, Haasan also played
the central character, Nallasivam.Kamal Haasan narrated the premise of a film to the director K. S.
Ravikumar as they sought to collaborate following Avvai Shanmugi (1996). The initial script followed two
men who meet in a train, quarrel, become friends and ultimately, one of them sacrifices everything for
the other man. One individual was a Madhavan was selected to play Anbarasu in January 2002.[26]
According to Kiran Rathod, she received a phone call from Haasan's office informing her that she was
offered the role of Balasaraswathi, which she accepted.[27] Rathod's voice in the film was dubbed by
the singer Anuradha Sriram.[28] Uma Riyaz Khan played the role of Nallasivam's friend and professional
colleague, Mehrunissa.[29] In a 2019 interview with The Indian Express, the film's script assistant and
costume designer, Sujatha Narayanan, revealed that Nandita Das and Shobana were the original choices
for Balasaraswathi and Mehrunissa respectively and that both of them declined due to schedule
conflicts.[16]
