Ben Kingsley – From Gandhi to…terrorist?

Hindi film “A Wednesday”, starring Anupam Kher and Naseeruddin Shah, received glowing reviews from many after its release in 2008. It was subsequently remade in both Tamil (as Unnaipol Oruvan) and in Telugu (as Eenadu), with Kamal Haasan in the lead role. The film follows the story of a police commissioner who receives an anonymous call warning him that several bombs have been planted across the city, and they will be set off if he does not release militants in his custody.

The film’s distributors UTV Motion Pictures later sold the rights of the film, and it has been remade into the English-language film “A Common Man”.

Starring multi award-winning actor Sir Ben Kingsley, “A Common Man” is an adapted version of the original story. The film has been directed by Chandran Rutnam, a half-Tamil half-Sinhalese director whose previous work includes “The Road from Elephant Pass” about the conflict between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan Army. Set in Sri Lanka, “A Common Man” also stars Ben Cross who was in the 1981 film “Chariots of Fire”.

Ben Kingsley, who is probably best known for his role as Mohandas Gandhi in the Oscar award-winning film “Gandhi”, plays the lead role of a man who has planted bombs in Sri Lanka and then make demands from the authorities via a series of anonymous phone calls.

Even though reports claim "A Common Man" isn’t about the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), from the trailer it can be argued that one character shares similarities to a former member of the LTTE. The baseball cap wearing character Prakash Kumar aka P.K, the arms & explosives pilot shares a resemblance to the real life Kumaran Pathmanathan aka KP, the LTTE’s chief procurer of arms, who is currently under "special protection" in Sri Lanka.

The film has been completed and is currently awaiting release, but no date has been confirmed as of yet. Watch the trailer below: