A Common Man (film)

A Common Man is a 2013 Sri Lankan action thriller film directed by Sri Lankan filmmaker Chandran Rutnam, starring Ben Kingsley and Ben Cross. The film is an official remake of the Indian film, A Wednesday! (2008).

A Common Man won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor awards at the Madrid International Film Festival and bronze medal in the Feature Films category at the New York Festivals’ International Television and Film Awards, three of the 119 Gold World Medals, 145 Silver, 104 Bronze, and 327 Finalist Certificates awarded that day.

Plot

The film starts in a room full of bomb making material and newspaper articles about LTTE bombings in Sri Lanka, the screen then cuts to a typical busy morning in Colombo. "The Man" (Ben Kingsley) plants five bombs around the city; on a public bus, in a shopping mall and the Polgoda police station, on an intercity train, and at the Katukurunda Airfield. The man then establishes his mini control station on top a skyscraper in Dehiwala and calls the police chief Morris Da Silva (Ben Cross) and informs him that if four prisoners are not released, the bombs will be detonated.

Cast

Ben Kingsley as "The Man"
Ben Cross as DIG Morris Da Silva
Patrick Rutnam as IP Mohideen
Fredrick-James Koch as IP Rangan Jayaweera
Wilson Gunaratne as Prakash Kumar
Veena Jayakody as Vegetable vendor
Ashan Dias
Sando Harris as D. Gopinath
Teddy Vidyalankara as Pithala Nihal
Numaya Siriwardena
Jerome de Silva
Wilmon Sirimanne
Dushyanth Weeraman
Mohammed Adamally

Production

A Common Man was filmed in 2012 in various locations in Colombo, Sri Lanka. A production of Asia Digital Entertainment, the film was produced by Manohan Nanayakkara, B.S. Radha Krishnan and Rutnam. Executive producers are Paul Mason and Jon Sheinberg. The deal with Myriad was arranged by Mason and The Movie Machine’s Sheinberg.