Cast

Credited cast:
	Kamal Haasan	...	Wisam Ahmad Kashmiri / Vishwanath
	Andrea Jeremiah	...	Ashmita Subramaniam
	Pooja Kumar	...	Niruba
	Rahul Bose	...	Omar Qureshi
	Zarina Wahab	...	Psychiatrist
	Miles Anderson	...	Dawkins
	James Babson	...	Tom Black
	Shekhar Kapur	...	Colonel Jagannath
	Jaideep Ahlawat	...	Salim
	Nassar	...	Nassar
	Samrat Chakrabarti	...	Deepak Chatterjee

Storyline

Vishwaroopam (titled Vishwaroop in Hindi) is a 2013 Tamil spy thriller film written, directed and co-produced by Kamal Haasan who also enacts the lead role. The film has Rahul Bose, Shekhar Kapur, Pooja Kumar, Andrea Jeremiah and Jaideep Ahlawat in supporting roles. Produced simultaneously as a bilingual in Tamil, Malayalam and Hindi and dubbed into Telugu language as Viswaroopam, the film features soundtrack composed by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, with lyrics by Vairamuthu and Haasan himself in while Javed Akhtar translated them for the Hindi version.

Development of the project commenced after the release of Haasan's Manmadhan Ambu (2010) when several of the crew were brought in from the United States to lend their technical expertise. The direction was taken over by Haasan from Selvaraghavan and reports indicating a comparison with several English films surfaced during the production. The first teaser was revealed in April 2012 and first theatrical trailer was revealed in June 2012 - the Tamil version attracted 682,000 views, Hindi version 194,000 views and Telugu version 20,000 views on YouTube.  Vishwaroopam is the first Indian film to utilize the new Auro 3D sound technology. The film was also to be the first Indian film to release via direct-broadcast satellite, also known as direct-to-home (DTH), but after protests of theatre owners this plan was dropped.

The film released worldwide, excluding Tamil Nadu, on 25 January 2013 while the Hindi version was released on 1 February 2013. Legal controversies, regarding the film's plotline of Indian security services' participation in the War on Terror, arouse as several Muslim civic organisations protested the film's release in Tamil Nadu, resulting in an official ban being imposed on the film in the state for 15 days by the Government of Tamil Nadu. The ban resulted in similar decisions in major overseas markets like Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Singapore while release was delayed in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Karnataka.

Despite the fragmented release, Vishwaroopam garnered generally favorable reviews from critics. Heeding to the requests of Muslim civic organisations, scenes perceived as controversial were muted or morphed, allowing the film for release on 7 February 2013 in Tamil Nadu. The film was coveted with awards for Best Art Direction and Best Choreography at the 60th National Film Awards.  A sequel to the film, Vishwaroopam II is set for release in late-2013.

The film opens in a rundown pigeon shop in New York City where an old man feeds them. He then sends one pigeon away. It flies high and lands in a skyscraper off the office window of a psychologist who is conducting a session with her client Nirupama (Pooja Kumar), a nuclear oncologist, who begins to confide that her’s was a marriage of convenience that provided a safe haven for pursuing her Ph.D in the U.S.A. for past three years and that her husband Vishwanath alias Viz (Kamal Haasan) is a middle-aged Kathak teacher. She is also put off by Viz's effeminate bearing and is attracted to her boss, Deepankar (Samrat Chakrabarti). Doubting whether her husband has secrets of his own, she hires a private investigator to tail him to probe grounds for divorce. She learns from the private investigator that Viz is a Muslim. In a sudden turn of events, the investigator is killed in a sea-side warehouse by Farukh, a prominent member of the terrorist outfit led by Omar (Rahul Bose). A business card on his wallet gives away Nirupama and the terror group led by Farukh nabs the couple.

Viz surprises Nirupama by having a fight with the terrorists, kills Farukh and his men at the warehouse and escapes with Nirupama. Omar and Viz have a past, one that takes the story back to circa 2002, to the Al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Viz's real name was Wisam Ahmad Kashmiri. He claims to be a Tamil Jihadi in Kashmir, wanted by the Indian Army, with a reward of INR5 lakh on his head. Omar accepts him into his team and drives him off to Afghanistan. Wisam becomes a trainer to the Al-Qaeda Jihadi's and also a family friend to Omar. One day, Omar tells Wisam that American prisoners of war are still alive, incarcerated and shifted each fortnight. He orders his deputy Salim (Jaideep Ahlawat) to behead the Captain and capture it on video. The next day, Salim tells Wisam that a new tall guest is expected in the town. Wisam later that night sees Osama Bin Laden greeting the Al Qaeda chieftains in a cave. Then, a joint US-led air force begins bombing raid on the town. Omar begins to doubt that there is an informer in the team but mistakenly orders lynching of an innocent man. What follows is a maze of events that go back and forth in time, unraveling a plot where in the terrorists are scraping cesium from oncological equipment to trigger a blast in New York City.

Nirupama is stunned to discover the true identity of Viz, his "uncle" (Shekhar Kapur), British "friend" Dr Dawkins (Miles Anderson) and the young "dancer" Ashmita (Andrea Jeremiah). Viz later reveals that he has a lot of emotional baggage and that he had executed many terrorists including Nassar (Nassar), Omar's boss. His mission is to bust the sleeper-cell of Al Qaeda in the US, which is planning to divert the attention through "capsules" capable of emitting mild nuclear radiation tied to pigeons while enabling Abbasi, a Nigerian suicide bomber to detonate the cesium bomb in the city.

Together, the Wisam team try to counter the plans of Omar. In the ensuing events, Wisam is arrested by the FBI before being rescued by his "uncle" Colonel Jagannath and Dr Dawkins is murdered by Salim while picking up a video tape from an antique shop. The FBI later releases Wisam after a call from the Indian embassy and Prime Minister of India, where the true identity of Wizam is revealed as an agent of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India. Wisam along with the FBI, take down Abbasi and defuse the Ceasium bomb with the help of Nirupama by using a microwave oven as Faraday cage to avoid incoming calls from any mobile phone. Omar and Salim try to escape in a plane. Omar tries to activate bomb through his phone, but fails. He then called Abbasi, but call is attended by Wisam, who tells him that Abbasi is not alive, Omar is shocked to hear this but escapes with Salim in his plane. The film ends with Wisam indicating that he would now go after Omar, alluding to a sequel set in India.   

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