Tagaru is already hogging conversations, with actor Shivarajkumar and director Suri working in it. There is also an interesting cast of Dhananjay, Vasishta Simha, Bhavana and Manvitha Harish, among others. The director is known for out-of-the-box storylines and jaw-dropping stunt scenes.
In Tagaru, for the pre-climax scene, he is attempting a never-before seen action stunt with the help of stuntmaster Jolly Bastian. In the movie, Shivarajkumar will do a wheelie with a massive truck, after tearing through a festive scene with it.
Jolly has recently won praise for his stunts in Angamaly Diaries directed by Lijo Jose Pellissery. This particular sequence in Tagaru is costing the producer, KP Srikanth, ` 80 lakh, and has the entire 500-member crew working hard and through the nights for the shoot.
Suri explains the situation and how the sequence is getting shot during nights. “It is a jathre set in a six-and-a-half acre ground,” he says.
“The sequence starts right after the function, and the fight is between Shivarajkumar and the antagonist played by Dhananjay along with 50 fighters. Jolly Bastian, an expert in vehicle action, has set many fight sequences for this.”
The director has tried to model the climax like an angry elephant’s rampage. Similarly, Shivarajkumar will ransack the whole place and destroy almost everything that stands in his way. Suri set the truck-fight sequence after learning that Shivarajkumar is an expert in truck driving and taking sharp turns.
“I was curious about Shivanna’s driving experience and he said that he was the first few to drive a Maruti vehicle, when it was first launched in India” says Suri. “Since then he said he has enjoyed every kind of driving.”
Suri says that the audience keep demanding something different with every movie and filmmakers have to cater to that. “In fact we had no plan to shoot such a fight sequence till the stunt director came up with the elephant-rampage idea,” he says.
Jolly Bastian, who has worked with Shivanna in many films, is happy to do a stunt sequence on a large scale.
“This will have around 50 fighters, the characters artistes and 300 junior artistes,” says Jolly. “This big stunt further leads to the climax, which will be shot in the next 10 days... If I am right, wheelie with a truck is a stunt that is being tried for the first time in Indian cinema.”
Jolly says that Shivanna doing the stunts makes it all the more interesting and “authentic”. “Unlike before, today everything can be found on Google,” he says. “So, we have to stick close to reality.
That’s why we are having Shivaana do all the stunts including the wheelie. I have worked with automobiles and understand the techni calities.”