Hari (director)

Hari
Hari with his wife Preetha at 62nd Britannia Filmfare South Awards 2014
Born	Nazareth, Tuticorin, India
Occupation	Film director
Years active	2002–present
Spouse(s)	Preetha Vijayakumar

Hari is a Tamil film director, best known for his action-masala films. As of 2014, he has directed 13 films.^[1]

Background

Hari was born in Katchana vilai near Nazareth in Tuticorin District, Tamil Nadu, India. His father, Gopal Nadar, is a vessels merchant.^[2] Later his family moved to Chennai, where Hari was schooling and had a graduate degree in Commerce.

Career

He first joined as an assistant and gained experience working with directors K. Natraj in Valli, Nassar in Avatharam and Alex Pandian. Later he assisted K. Balachander in his film Kalki and worked as an associate director with Saran in films Amarkalam and Parthen Rasithen.^[3][4][5][6]

His first film, in 2002, was Thamizh with Prashanth and Simran. Film critic Balaji commented that it was "one of the few movies in recent times where a lot of importance seems to have been attached to the script. In spite of the flimsy story and routine screenplay where a youth grows to be a 'dada', the dialogs elevate the quality of the movie and make it very enjoyable".^[7] His second film Saamy under Kavithaalaya banner starred Vikram. It was named the year's biggest hit,^[8] grossing ₹ 160 million.^[9] Its success led to remakes in Telugu (Lakshmi Narasimha),^[10] Kannada (Ayya)^[11] and Hindi languages (Policegiri).^[12] His next two films Kovil with Silambarasan and Arul also starred Vikram. In 2005, he made Ayya starring Sarathkumar, which introduced Nayantara to Tamil cinema. His next film was Aaru with Suriya in 2005. In 2007, he directed two films, Thaamirabharani with Vishal Krishna and Vel with Suriya. In 2008, he directed Seval with Bharath. Ayyappa Prasad from Nowrunning.com stated that Hari "panders to the taste of his rural audience all the way, but the movie is bound to disappoint city-dwellers since neither the story nor its treatment appeal to anyone with an IQ quotient higher than the least educated village wastrel".^[13]

In 2010 Hari directed his tenth film, Singam with Suriya, marking their third collaboration. The film was one of the top box office films of the year,^[14] although reviewers identified it as a standard masala entertainer.^[15][16] Following its success, the film was remade in Hindi (as Singham), Kannada (as Kempe Gowda) and Bengali (Shotru).^[17][18] After directing Venghai, a film with Dhanush and Tamannaah Bhatia in the lead, he made a sequel to Singam, with Suriya reprising his role as Duraisingam. It was named one of the biggest box office hits of 2013,^[19][20] with Sify stating that it was "the biggest theatrical earner" of the year.^[21] He worked for the second time with Vishal, in a film titled Poojai,^[22] which had Shruti Haasan as the female lead.^[23]He is now shooting Singam 3, the third sequel of Singam popularly known as S3. It is starring Suriya, Anushka Shetty and Shruti Haasan in the lead roles.The movie will be released on 16th December.

Personal life

He is married to former actress Preetha Vijayakumar, daughter of Vijayakumar, and has a son.^[24] During the shooting for Seval, Preetha gave birth to their third son.^[25]

Filmography

Lyricist

• 2007 Thaamirabharani
• 2007 Vel
• 2009 Seval
• 2010 Singam
• 2011 Venghai
• 2016 Singam III

References

External links

• Hari at the Internet Movie Database