South Indian cinema influences Sinhala cinema
The extremely competitive South Indian cinema has introduced many new filmmakers who have created movies with novel themes, stories and even new genres. Many such movies have been remade not only to different South Indian languages but even have influenced the powerful Bollywood cinema as well. Sharing many cultural, ethnic and linguistic connection, Sri Lanka too has lately started remaking successful South Indian movies.
In 2017 box office recorded Malayalam thriller film, ‘Drishyam’ (Visual) was remade as “Dharmayuddhaya” and the newest Sinhala remake of box-office hit South Indian film is ‘U Turn’.
The remake of the original Kannada movie is the directorial debut of inernationally award cinematographer Channa Deshapriya and it is now being screened around the country.
Originally made by Pawan Kumar in 2016, it was made to Malayalam as ‘Careful’ by V. K. Prakash in 2017 and to Tamil and Telugu by Pawan himself as U Turn in 2018
The film features Hemal Ranasinghe Thumindu Dodantenna, Bimal Jayakody, Gamya Wijedasa with the debut actress Chanu Dissanayake in the stellar cast. The music of the film is composed by Chinthaka Jayakody.
Raveena (Chanu Dissanayake), is a journalist working on an article on repeated accidents taking place at a flyover. She also has a crush on the crime reporter Adithya (played by Thumindu Dodantenna), who helps in her research on the accidents. She discovers that each day in order to avoid traffic, some motorists move the concrete blocks that partition two ways but they don’t move them back and the blocks are left to lie randomly on the road leading to many accidents. A beggar sitting on the flyover notes down the vehicle numbers of bikers who violate the rule to take the U-turn. He shares the list with Raveena. She obtains the details of the culprits using her contacts in the traffic department and plans an article to highlight those who makes way accidents.
Channa Deshapriya
Her attempt to meet the first person on the list goes in vain. Strangely on the same day, the police takes her into custody and accuses her of killing the very person she wanted to meet. She gives her version, though the senior police officer rejects it, sub-inspector Ranga (Hemal Ranasinghe), finds it believable and starts investigating on it. To the shock of everyone, it is revealed that all the persons Raveena has on her list have committed suicide. They also noticed that they have committed suicide the same day they took the wrong “u-turn”.
Produced by Sirasa TV and M Entertainments, the film is distributed by CEL. The film will be screened at Regal – Colombo, Lido – Borella, Majestic – Colombo, Liberty Scope, Colombo City Centre and other theatres around the country.
