Scene story: Suriya plays an ex-cop with an odd team

Fans had decided Suriya was playing a blind cop in Scene. The film’s writer, Dravid Selvam, has since said he is not, and now director Jithu Madhavan has explained what the film actually is: a crime comedy about a man who has left the police and still has a case to solve.

“A person who was a police officer, after leaving the force, has to investigate an old case. He does not have the force behind him. So he builds a team on his own,” Jithu said. “It turns out to be a strange team. None of them are normal.” Getting them to live together is hard enough, he said, and getting them to work a case together is the real challenge, which is where the film finds its fun. He describes it as part crime, part comedy, part romance and part thriller, and says it is meant to play as a family entertainer.

Once the blindness theory fell apart, the internet moved on to face blindness, the condition that makes it hard to recognise people. Jithu has not said anything to settle that one. What he did say is that this is a completely different kind of character for Suriya, with the look, the style, the action and the comedy all working for him.

Scene is Suriya’s 47th film and the Tamil debut of both Jithu Madhavan, who made Romancham and Aavesham in Malayalam, and his regular composer Sushin Shyam. The two songs out so far, Aathi Iva Yarraa and Aeroplane, have done well. The cast includes Nazriya Nazim, back on screen after a break, along with Naslen, Anandraj, Lal and Raj Priyan. Suriya and Jyotika produce through 2D Entertainment and Zhagaram Studios, with Ajmal Sabu editing and Chethan D’Souza on stunts.

The next stop is Dubai, where the makers have set up an event called Scene Live on Sunday, October 25. Then comes the release on November 6, the same day as Nayanthara’s Mookuthi Amman 2 and a day after Ramayana opens across the country.