Ratchagan 1997

Ajay Padmanabhan, Nagarjuna Akkineni, is an unemployed youth whose quick temper drags him into trouble. He doesn’t tolerate crime and acts fast, delivering decisive beatings to wrongdoers and offering unsolicited advice on how justice should be served. This volatile streak deeply concerns his father, Padmanabhan, S. P. Balasubramaniam, who works for an insurance firm and longs to see a calmer, more disciplined son. A meditation expert is brought in to help, but the expert’s verdict is nuanced: Ajay’s anger isn’t irrational; it’s a response to the injustices he constantly witnesses. Amid this tension, Ajay encounters Sonia Sriram, Sushmita Sen, and she finds herself drawn to his fierce sense of justice. Sonia’s love for him grows as she sees that his anger is tied to a strong moral compass. With her father’s help, she tries to win Ajay over; at first he resists, but a string of unusual, transformative events gradually opens his heart, and a true romance begins to blossom between them.

Sonia’s father, Sriram, [Girish Karnad], is an industrialist who owns the DCM-Daewoo automotive facility in Chennai. He does not object to the match, but he imposes a hard test: Ajay must secure a job in his factory, keep his temper under control for three months, and refrain from fighting even when he sees crime happening right in front of him. If he fails, the marriage will be called off. Accepting the challenge, Ajay steps into a new world of work, waiting to prove himself. Yet Sriram’s own plant battles internal treachery—ten workers, aligned with a rival and aided by his younger stepbrother, Gnaneshwar, strike at the factory’s stability, repeatedly sabotaging equipment and sabotaging progress, which results in material losses and mounting pressure on everyone involved.

Gnaneshwar, returning with years of grievances, schemes to topple his stepbrother’s empire and seize control of the family business. He commands a cadre of loyal henchmen who unleash terror by murdering veteran workers and terrorizing new ones, pushing the factory toward collapse. In a bid to push Sriram into a corner, Gnaneshwar and his men stage a brutal sequence against the Korean experts summoned to repair and stabilize the plant. Ajay, trying to stay true to his promise, manages to shield the visiting professionals from harm, and this moment becomes a public showcase of his steadfast character. Sriram, eager to see Ajay break, fans the flames of conflict by bringing the dispute to the media, hoping to provoke a clash between Ajay and the gang. But Ajay’s calm resilience defies the provocation, and Sriram’s gambit backfires in ways neither he nor his son-in-law could have anticipated. The manipulated leverage—using his father’s name to ratchet up pressure in the factory—proves disastrous, as it incites a calculated retaliation from Gnaneshwar’s forces.

The turning point arrives when the pressure culminates in tragedy: Ajay’s father is killed by Gnaneshwar’s men after the media storm, a brutal consequence that shatters the fragile balance Ajay had been trying to maintain. In the wake of this devastation, Ajay makes a fateful choice. He abandons his earlier vow and unleashes the full force of his strength, banishing the ten men from the factory and taking a stand against the gang’s predations. But Gnaneshwar answers with a more ruthless gambit, coercing Sonia into a life-or-death ultimatum: she must destroy Sriram’s factory with a truck loaded with a powerful Russian explosive, or else face dire consequences. In the climactic confrontation, Gnaneshwar himself kills Sriram by hurling him from a helicopter; the pursuit ends with Gnaneshwar’s helicopter crashing into the mountains, ending his threat. Sonia is saved, and the final moment sees her reuniting with Ajay, their bond strengthened in the wake of loss and upheaval, choosing to face the future together.