Last Thursday, I got to see Billa at Prasad's Multiplex.  I haven't watched a Tamil movie in a while, and was glad that I got to see this one.  Billa 2007 is a remake of the 1980 Rajnikanth movie Billa, which itself is a remake of the 1978 Amitabh Bachchan movie Don.  Now this 2007 remake also takes some pointers from the 2006 remake Don!  Are we clear about this yet?  Let me complicate things a little more — there is a Telugu movie called Don that has just been released in theatres!

Anyway, 2007 Billa has Ajith Kumar as gangster David Billa whose current base of operations is Malaysia.  He is wanted by authorities all over the world, and the person who has been tracking him for years is DCP Jayaprakash (Prabhu).  When Billa is killed in an encounter, the police pull a switch — they get the kind-hearted thug Velu to impersonate him and infiltrate Billa's gang.  The plan is that Velu will lead the authorities to the super-crime boss Jagadish.  In the mix is Namitha as Billa's lover CJ, and Nayanthara as Sasha, who enters Billa's gang with an intent to kill him (as Billa had murdered her brother earlier).  As you can see this movie follows the plot of the Hindi Don movies, but it is a more straightforward, tighter story (the twists that Farhan Akthar introduced in his 2006 Hindi version aren't there, and neither is the entire Jasjit/JJ subplot).  Still, the second half seemed slower-moving, and somehow was not as good as what had come before it.  Anyway, it was an entertaining movie overall.  It is stylishly directed by Vishnuvardhan.  I liked the music by Yuvan Shankar Raja as well, and as usual, he uses a variety of musical styles in his score.  7/10.

I did a quick drawing based on Billa.  This was done with ballpoint pen and took about 5 or 10 minutes to do.  Later, I spent some more time on it and added colours digitally.  Both versions are viewable above, and further, you can click on them to see larger images.  The interesting aspect of these images is that I did ALL the post-processing (touchups and colouring!) with The GIMP on Ubuntu (that's a first for me)!  I did a couple more drawings too, this way, which I'll be adding here in upcoming posts.