Peacekeeping Force) is a 1994 Indian Tamil-language political satire film, written and directed by Manivannan.
It revolves around a politician who builds his career through unethical means, while his son, an honest law enforcer, seeks to take him down.
During the prepoll events of the 1971 Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly election, Mani's party refuses to give him the ticket.
Mani instructs Amavasai to stand for the MLA election as an independent candidate to teach his party a lesson.
Amavasai campaigns hard and also renames himself Nagaraja Cholan (lying about being a Chola descendant) to elevate his social status.
Amavasai, knowing that a local zamindar is looking for a groom for his daughter, Sivakami, quickly arranges to be married to her as he wants to become rich and respected.
Raised by his maternal grandparents in a village afar, Thayamma's son, Thangavel becomes a Reserve Police constable.
They fall in love, but during their engagement event, a dispute arises as people ask about Thangavel's father's identity, and the wedding is cancelled.
Upon learning the truth about his father and his corruption which led to the betrayal and death of his mother, Thangavel seeks revenge.
Sathyaraj was enjoying good success as a lead actor, when his friend, director Manivannan narrated the script of Amaidhipadai to him.
[6] The film, according to Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen, indirectly criticises the real-life political party Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's (DMK) penchant for nepotism.
[10] Despite facing competition from other Pongal releases like Mahanadhi, Sethupathi IPS and Veetla Visheshanga, it emerged a major success,[11] running for over 25 weeks in theatres, thus becoming a silver jubilee film.
[12][13] Malini Mannath of The Indian Express lauded Sathyaraj's performance as Amavasai, adding, "The scenes of the steady rise of the sly cunning man have been well built up by Manivannan.
[14] K. Vijiyan of New Straits Times wrote "A pretty much straight-forward story but it is Manivannan's super handling and interesting dialogues that place this movie above the average".
[15] Thulasi of Kalki felt the film's story was similar to Mr. Bharath (1986), only the screenplay and dialogues were different, praised the performances of Sathyaraj and Manivannan but felt Sundarrajan and Ranjitha were underutilised and found stunts as childish and also there were too many songs but the background music was superb.
[17] Following Manivannan's death in June 2013, The Hindu wrote that this film "set the standards for political satire" in the industry.
[19] Manivannan directed a spiritual successor titled Nagaraja Cholan MA, MLA (2013) with Sathyaraj reprising the role of Amavasai.