Nayak (नायक) 2001

Published on April 22, 2013 in Cinema

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Plot
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Banner	Sri Surya Movies
Director	S. Shankar
Writer	S. Shankar
Producer	A. M. Rathnam
Orginal music	A. R. Rahman
Cinematography	K.V. Anand
Film Editing	V. T. Vijayan
Art Director	Thotta Tharani
Camera Operator
Assistant Cameramen
Playback Singers	Udit Narayan , Hari Haran, Kavita Krishnamurthy, Praveen, Shiraz Uppal, Vasundhara Das, Shankar Mahadevan, Alka Yagnik, Hans Raj Hans, Sunidhi Chauhan, Abhijeet , Sanjeevani

Character	Actor / Actress
Shivaji Rao Gaekwad	Annu Kapoor
Manjari	Rani Mukerji
Balraj Chauhan	Amrish Puri
Topi	Johnny Lever
Laila	Pooja Batra
Special Appearance	Sushmita Sen
Balraj Chauhan's support	Rana Jung Bahadur
	Razak Khan
Mrs. Gaekwad	Nina Kulkarni
Bansal	Paresh Rawal
Manjari's dad	Shivaji Satam
Pandurang	Saurabh Shukla
Balraj Chauhan's support	Anupam Shyam
Man on scooter	Raj Acharya

The plot focuses on the protagonist, Shivaji Rao (Anil Kapoor). He happens to be an ambitious TV cameraman, working for "Q TV" along with his friend Topi (Johnny Lever). While on the job, Rao records a conversation in which the Chief Minister Balraj Chauhan (Amrish Puri), takes an indifferent stand during riots triggered by a fight between some college students and bus drivers, so as not to lose his voter base. Due to police inaction, there is loss of life and damage to property. To explain his actions, Chauhan later agrees to a live interview with Shivaji, during the course of which Rao raises these issues and airs the Chief Minister's stand he had caught on tape.

In response to Shivaji's allegations about the mismanagement by his government, Chauhan redirects the question by instead talking about how difficult his job is due to red tape and bureaucracy, and challenges Shivaji to be the CM for a day and experience those problems himself. Shivaji reluctantly accepts the challenge to prove Chuhan wrong. Educated and vigilant, Shivaji takes care of issues that affect the populace everyday, giving the slum their rightful apartments, getting jobs for the unemployed, suspending inefficient and corrupt government officers. He is assisted by the secretary, Bansal (Paresh Rawal) who serves as a side kick. As the last act of the day, Rao gets Chauhan arrested as he is the root cause of all the corruption. Later, Chauhan bails out, and passes an ordinance to nullify all orders passed by Shivaji when he was the CM. Taking Shivaji's success as an insult, Chauhan sends hitmen to get him killed and destroys his house on false grounds.

Meanwhile Shivaji falls in love with Manjali (Rani Mukherjee), a naive and carefree villager. When Rao asks her father (Shivaji Satam) her hand in marriage, he refuses on grounds that Rao is not employed by the government. After his tenure as a one-day CM he starts preparing for the Indian Civil Service Examination to win Manjaris hand in marriage. However, Bansal shows up and tells him that Shivaji's popularity has rocketed sky-high and people want him to become the next CM of the state. He is reluctant at first, but when Chauhan's henchmen vandalise Q TV premises to intimidate him, and the people show their support by thronging to his place in huge numbers, he agrees to take part in the elections.

In the ensuing state elections, he wins by a vast majority. But Manjalis father, angered by Shivaji's decision, refuses to let his daughter marry him. Here, Chauhans political allies desert him causing his defeat. On becoming the chief minister, Shivaji brings about lots of improvements and quickly becomes an idol in the peoples eyes. However his growing popularity is threatened continuously by Chauhan who uses his henchmen to kill him or at least tarnish is image as a public hero. But Shivaji promptly answers by digging out all accusations against Chauhan and his allies. This, however, causes a reunion of Chauhan and his allies. After a failed attempt on Shivaji's life by hiring an assassin, a bomb is detonated at his home killing his parents.

In the final attempt Chauhan orders his P.A. to destroy law and order and cause bomb explosions in various parts of the city. But a priest is able to overhear a few men planning to detonate bombs. He immediately notifies Shivaji's office via the "Complaint Box" department. Chauhan's P.A. is arrested and under tactical inquiry by Shivaji and his secretary, he discloses the location of the 4 bombs. A Bomb Squad is able to defuse 3 bombs, but the 4th one explodes before they could reach to it. Chauhan, however, uses this success against Shivaji by blaming the young CM for the bomb. Seeing no way out, Shivaji summons Chauhan to the secretariat and creates a situation such that it would seem as if Chauhan was there to shoot Shivaji but failed. Shivaji takes up a gun, but pointing it to his arm shoots himself, and then hands over the gun to Chauhan. Now getting to know that Shivaji had set a trap, an enraged Chauhan attempts to shoot Shivaji, but his shot misses. The security guards then shoot down Chauhan killing him. Shivaji, secretly tells Bansal the truth and says that "finally they have turned me into a politician too" but Bansal believes that Chauhan deserved death saying "he instituted politics for a long time for corruption and evil; you did it only once for good" . Manjali's father also comes to realise that Shivaji is in fact a great man who sees duty before everything else and allows Manjali to marry him.

In the end, the city develops under the governance of Shivaji Rao and his colleagues. The complaint box, where people were supposed to fill in their complaints and information about various threats anonymously, is shown to be empty, signifying that the reasons to be afraid have been taken care of.