''Aithe...'' () is a 2003 Indian Telugu-language

thriller film Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre ...

written and directed by

Chandra Sekhar Yeleti Chandra Sekhar Yeleti (born 4 March 1973) is an Indian film director known for his works in Telugu cinema. He made his directorial debut with the Neo-noir crime film, ''Aithe'', which received the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Te ...

, and produced by

Gangaraju Gunnam Gunnam Gangaraju is an Indian producer, screenwriter, and director known for his works in Telugu cinema and Telugu television. He is best known as the creator and co-producer of the TV sitcom ''Amrutham'' (2001–2007), widely considered to be ...

under his studio Just Yellow. It stars debutants

Mohit Chadda Mohit is an Indian actor who appears in Hindi, Telugu and Tamil films. His first Telugu film ''Aithe'' won the National Film Award for the Best Telugu Feature Film. The next year, he starred in the thriller film ''Aithe Enti'' (2004). He was s ...

, Shashank, , Janardhan, and

Sindhu Tolani Sindhu Tolani is an Indian actress working in Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Hindi language films. Tolani was born in Mumbai, India on 19 July 1983. She has been a '' Fair & Lovely'' cream model in North India. Film career Sindhu Tolani started h ...

, while

Pavan Malhotra Pavan Malhotra (born 2 July 1958) is an Indian actor who works in Hindi films and television alongside Punjabi and few Telugu films. He has played lead roles in Buddhadeb Dasgupta's National Film Award-winning '' Bagh Bahadur'' and Saeed Akht ...

plays a pivotal role. The film deals with underworld criminal nexus and

hijacking Hijacking may refer to: Common usage Computing and technology * Bluejacking, the unsolicited transmission of data via Bluetooth * Brandjacking, the unauthorized use of a company's brand * Browser hijacking * Clickjacking (including ''like ...

. The film was shot simultaneously in

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...

as ''50 Lakh'' (2007). ''Aithe'' released on 11 April 2003. The film ran for a hundred days and was commercially successful. The film won the

National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Telugu The National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Telugu is one of the National Film Awards presented annually by the Directorate of Film Festivals, the organisation set up by Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, India. It is one of several ...

that year while Malhotra received

Nandi Special Jury Award The Nandi Special Jury Award is given by the state government as part of its annual Nandi Awards for Telugu films since 1981. See also * Nandi Awards * Cinema of Andhra Pradesh References {{DEFAULTSORT:Nandi Special Jury Award Special Ju ...

and

Filmfare Best Villain Award (Telugu) The Filmfare Best Villain Award was given by ''Filmfare'' as part of its annual Filmfare Awards for Hindi films, to recognise an actor who had delivered an outstanding performance in a negative role. Although the awards started in 1954, this ca ...

for his performance. The film was remade in Tamil as '' Naam'' (2003) and in Malayalam as '' Wanted'' (2004).

Plot

Irfan Khan is a key

mafia "Mafia" is an informal term that is used to describe criminal organizations that bear a strong similarity to the original “Mafia”, the Sicilian Mafia and Italian Mafia. The central activity of such an organization would be the arbitration of d ...

affiliate in

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...

. Khan is on the wanted list of criminals in

Hyderabad Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the ''de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River (India), Musi River, in the northern part ...

with a bounty of 50

lakh A lakh (; abbreviated L; sometimes written lac) is a unit in the Indian numbering system equal to one hundred thousand (100,000; scientific notation: 105). In the Indian 2,2,3 convention of digit grouping, it is written as 1,00,000. For ex ...

. Aiming to migrate to

Dubai Dubai (, ; ar, دبي, translit=Dubayy, , ) is the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the capital of the Emirate of Dubai, the most populated of the 7 emirates of the United Arab Emirates.The Government and Politics of ...

so that he can remotely control the operations in Mumbai, Khan devises a plan of getting four of his own men to hijack a domestic flight from Hyderabad to

Kathmandu , pushpin_map = Nepal Bagmati Province#Nepal#Asia , coordinates = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = , subdivision_type1 = Province , subdivision_name1 = Bagmati Prov ...

(destined for Mumbai) in which he is a passenger. The Home Minister of Maharashtra is also on the flight, and the four men are to release all the passengers and concentrate on the Home Minister. From Kathmandu, he plans to go to Dubai. For the hijack, he organises a group of four intelligent men who are in dire need of money and who do not have a criminal record. The audience is made to believe in the beginning that the four central characters are these four men, but in fact they kidnap Khan before the flight takes off, aiming to get the prize money. They hide Khan in a forest and call the Assistant Commissioner of Police, who is a double agent for the mafia. When the ACP does not yield (as he wants them to release Khan), one of the four, Kumar, makes a deal with the Mafia and obtains a bag with 2

crore A crore (; abbreviated cr) denotes ten million (10,000,000 or 107 in scientific notation) and is equal to 100 lakh in the Indian numbering system. It is written as 1,00,00,000 with the local 2,2,3 style of digit group separators (one lakh is e ...

. However, the bag in which the money is kept has a bomb in it. When Kumar tells the others that he has done this, they back out, and he joins with them, just in time. Meanwhile, Khan's assistant, Musharraf, comes and takes Khan from the forest, but is stopped by IB agent Zaheer Khan, who has been following the four men and Musharraf throughout the movie. Finally, the four friends come back to their house. They find a bag, which they had lost previously. With that, they find a note from Zaheer explaining everything. The bag also has, to their joy, their prize money.

Cast

as Irfan Khan * Veerendra Chowhan as Musharraf *

as Ramu * Shashank as Kumar * Janardhan as Shankar * as Vivek *

as Aditi * Likhita as Kavitha * Narsing Yadav as the Maharashtra

home minister The Minister of Home Affairs (or simply, the Home Minister, short-form HM) is the head of the Ministry of Home Affairs of the Government of India. One of the senior-most officers in the Union Cabinet, the chief responsibility of the Home Minist ...

Sivaji Raja Sivaji Raja (born 26 February 1962) is an Indian actor who primarily appears in Telugu films and television series. He appeared in more than 400 films. He is also known for his work in TV serials '' Amrutam'', ''Alasyam Amrutham Visham'', ''Mr.R ...

as Zaheer Khan * CVL Narasimha Rao as Vivek's father *

Ashok Kumar Kumudlal Ganguly (13 October 1911 – 10 December 2001), better known by his stage name Ashok Kumar and also by Dadamoni, was an Indian actor who attained iconic status in Indian cinema and who was a member of the cinematic Ganguly family. He ...

as Madan Seth *

Harsha Vardhan Harsha Vardhan is an Indian actor, comedian and screenwriter known for his works predominantly in Telugu cinema. He has also worked in a few Tamil and Hindi language films, in addition to television. He is known for his performance in Telugu ...

as Chotu * Sanjay Raichura as an ACP * Lalith Sharma as the IB chief

Soundtrack

This album marked the debut of

Kalyani Malik Kalyani Malik is an Indian music director and playback singer in Telugu cinema. Since achieving recognition through Chandra Sekhar Yeleti's film ''Aithe'' (2003), Malik has provided musical scores for many other films. His most recent works are ...

as a composer.

Reception

Idlebrain.com Idlebrain.com is an Indian entertainment website that features information, news, and reviews on Telugu cinema. It is one of the oldest websites on the Internet focusing on Telugu films. The site is especially popular for its film reviews writt ...

'' reviewer Jeevi rated the film 4/5 and appreciated Yeleti's screenplay and direction."This story is a very authentic story without any surrealism or traces of inspiration in it. Screenplay of 'Aithe' is terrific. The debutant director Chandra Sekhar Eleti proves himself as the new generation director with a good technical knowledge," he stated. Praveen Lance Fernandez of ''

The Times of India ''The Times of India'', also known by its abbreviation ''TOI'', is an Indian English-language daily newspaper and digital news media owned and managed by The Times Group. It is the third-largest newspaper in India by circulation and largest ...

'' reviewed the Hindi version ''50 Lakh'' and gave it 2 stars. He wrote: "''50 Lakh'' has nothing to offer mainly because of its shoe-string budget and bad performances. But from the plot and screenplay point of view, this one definitely scores over a lot of other recent films." Fernandez opined that had some of the performances been better, the film would have received better acclaim. "The south actors are clearly uncomfortable acting in a Hindi film," he added.

Awards

- 2004 *

Nandi Award for Best Story Writer The Nandi Award The Nandi Awards are the awards that recognise the excellence in Telugu cinema, Telugu theatre and Telugu television, and Lifetime achievements in Indian cinema. Presented annually by the Government of Andhra Pradesh, the awar ...

Nandi Award for Best Audiographer The Nandi Award The Nandi Awards are the awards that recognise the excellence in Telugu cinema, Telugu theatre and Telugu television, and Lifetime achievements in Indian cinema. Presented annually by the Government of Andhra Pradesh, the aw ...

- Madhusudhan Reddy *

- Pavan Malhotra

Legacy

Mohit Chadda and Pavan Malhotra starred in the thriller film ''The Deal'', which was later renamed ''

Aithe Enti ''Aithe Enti'' () is a 2004 Indian Telugu-language thriller film directed by Soma Vijay Prakash and starring Namitha, newcomer Steven Kapoor, and Mohit Chadda. The film was criticised for adding vulgar scenes to the forty-five minute screenplay. ...

'' after the success of this film. A reboot titled ''

Aithe 2.0 ''Aithe 2.0'' is a 2018 Indian Telugu language, Telugu-language techno-thriller directed by Raj Madiraju. The film stars newcomers Bengali-Hindi actor Indraneil Sengupta (in his Telugu debut), Zara Shah, Abhishek, Kartavya Sharma, Neeraj, Mrunal, ...

'' released in 2018.

References

External links

* {{National Film Award Best Feature Film Telugu 2003 films Indian crime thriller films Films about criminals Films about organised crime in India 2003 crime thriller films Crime films based on actual events Indian aviation films Indian buddy films Telugu films remade in other languages Best Telugu Feature Film National Film Award winners 2000s Telugu-language films 2003 directorial debut films Films directed by Chandra Sekhar Yeleti 2000s Hindi-language films Indian multilingual films 2003 multilingual films