The much-anticipated movie of the year, Thalapathy Vijay's Sarkar has hit the screens today and is expected to become a huge box office hit. Fans of the star are celebrating the festival of Deepavali today as 'Sarkar Deepavali'.
After Thupakki and Kaththi, AR Murugadoss has teamed up with Kollywood star Vijay for the third time in this political drama. Produced by Sun Pictures, the movie features Keerthy Suresh, Varalakshmi Sarathkumar, Radha Ravi, Yogi Babu and others as well. Sarkar has been reportedly released in over 3000 screens worldwide.
Here are the first reactions for the most expected Kollywood film this year:
A huge number of fans began their 'Sarkar' celebrations even before sunrise at Rohini Silver screens in Chennai when the theatre screened their first show at 4:30 am. A video posted by Sun Pictures on Twitter from the theatre showed fans whistling and cheering for the opening credits of the film.
One of the lead actresses in the movie Varalakshmi Sarathkumar posted a video from Vetri theatre in Chennai, where she watched the early morning show with fans. The theatre is known as Vijay's 'fort' as all his movies get a huge opening here.
Film critic Kaushik LM gave a three-star rating for the movie, saying he liked the first half of the movie better.
Popular YouTube movie reviewer Prashanth Rangaswamy appreciated director Murugadoss and actor Vijay after watching the first half of the movie. "Sarkar interval - 2 minutes of silence to haters," he wrote.
The movie is receiving a positive response from the film fraternity. Actor-producer Udhayanidhi Stalin wished luck to the Sarkar team on Twitter after catching the preview show.
Imaikkaa Nodigal director Ajay Gnanamuthu took to Twitter and wrote that he truly enjoyed the movie from the beginning to the end.
From posting pictures of FDFS (first day first show) tickets to celebration videos, Vijay fans have been dominating social media platforms since morning. On the eve of the movie release, police had to resort to lathi-charge to control the crowd which had thronged a suburban theatre in Chennai for ticket booking.
Sarkar is also set to break records in Mollywood as the movie will be screened in around 350 theatres in Kerala. Actor Vijay's fan club called 'Kollam Nanbans' in Kerala had erected a 175 feet cutout of Vijay. Here's a tweet of a fan from Kerala.
A person from the United States had posted pictures of Sarkar movie tickets with the caption, "Why do people in India get cute tickets for Sarkar FDFS."
WATCH | First day first show reactions to Sarkar
On the other side, the Vijay-Ajith fans associations war is already on with Ajith fans taking to Twitter to post their review and memes about Sarkar. Though the two stars share a good rapport with each other, the rivalry among their fans never seems to die down.
Sarkar went through a lot of controversies before it finally got the green card. The film's director AR Murugadoss was accused of plagiarising a writer's story. The issue was sorted out after the filmmaker agreed to give a note of thanks for writer Varun Rajendran in the credits.
Adding to the controversy, while the moviemakers' were preparing for the grand launch of the movie, popular piracy website 'Tamil Rockers' issued a threat on Twitter that they will publish an HD print of the movie soon.
Amidst all this drama and fanfare, all eyes are on Thalapathy Vijay's rumoured political entry. "People will contest in the elections to form government but we have formed our Sarkar (government) already and now we are going to contest in the elections," he had hinted at the movie's audio launch. With no official confirmation, we'll just have to wait and watch.