Lucia

Year: 2013

Duration: 135 min

Sanjay, a detective from Mumbai crime branch starts investigating a case of Nikki (Sathish Ninasam) in Bengaluru. Nikki is on life support and media debates on his euthanasia with mixed opinions. Sanjay going through Nikkis belongings stumbles upon some scribbled notes and a mysterious pill. Meanwhile police captures two suspects and starts to torture them for information.Nikki is from a village near Mandya working as an Usher/torch-shiner in a Bengaluru movie theatre owned by Shankranna (Achyuth Kumar). Despite being satisfied with his modest life, Nikki suffers from insomnia and yearns for a companion. On one of his sleepless nights Nikki is contacted by a drug dealer who gives him Lucia pills as a solution to his sleeping problems. He boasts about the drugs capability to help one dream the ideal life they want but warns that on discontinuation the same dreams shall turn in to a nightmare.With the help of Lucia pills, Nikki starts dreaming of himself being a successful actor surrounded by people he know in the real world (Interspersed by black-and-white sequences). Nikki is attacked by a contract killer for extortion in his dream and coincidentally finds himself and Shankranna attacked by the same set of goons in reality. Shankranna had starred in a film in his youth funded by the leader of the goons, who now wants Shankranna to sign off his theatre for his debt. More events from the dream are followed by similar events in reality as Nikki falls in love with Shwetha (Sruthi Hariharan) who is a model in the dream and a waiter in the reality.In the dream, Nikki and Shwetha hit it off easily at the beginning but later friction arises when Nikki expresses his discontent on Shwetha working in film industry. Meanwhile in reality, Nikki struggles to win Shwethas heart, who rejects him first due to his low salary and falls later for his humble character. Shwethas attempts to get Nikki educated and lead him to earn a better job turns futile and also results in death of Shankranna in the hands of goons. Frustrated, Nikki chooses to leave Shwetha and continue to work in the theatre, despite the threats. Nikki redecorates the theatre and releases Shankrannas film to the audience. He later reconciles with Shwetha, who agrees to marry him.In the dream, Shankranna is kidnapped, Nikki rescues him with the help of police and all of the goons are arrested or killed except for the contract killer. Nikki feels Shankranna is not safe with him and decides to retire him off as his manager. Nikki breaks up with Shwetha and sends off all his servants to be alone. Later, a visually disturbed Nikki finds himself in a thrashed room with things like empty container of lucia pills, pen, torch etc floating in air. Nikki gets hold of the torch and shines it to see his life as a torch-shiner projected on the walls of the room.Shwetha is now distraught of being in the lime light and starts to see the point what Nikki had previously made. Nikki meets Shwetha and tells her that he cannot decide if the present moment is a dream or reality but he is ultimately happy. Asking Shwetha to close her eyes, Nikki jumps off the roof perplexing everyone present including the contract killer waiting to kill him.At present, Sanjay with the help of suspects, performs a sting operation on the drug dealer and learns more about Lucia pills. Meanwhile, Shwetha is caught in an attempt to kill Nikki by pulling off the plug. During her interrogation, the whole investigating team along with Shwetha watches a re-run of an interview of film star Nikki. In the interview, Nikki expresses his dissatisfaction of the stardom and reveals that he is actually color blind from an accident in his childhood. He tells the interviewer that he dreams to be a normal person and in fact in one of his dreams he is a torch-shiner who gets no attention from people and is happily in love with the dream of his life.Sanjay is now convinced that Nikki is living in his own versions of reality and chose to be in his dream over the real world by attempting suicide. Sanjay gets Shwetha to act and behave as if in Nikkis dream, enacts himself as a contract killer and shoots the comatose Nikki in the head with an empty gun. Simultaneously, Nikki, aware and alive in his dream world finds everything disappearing around him and is killed by a head shot. Nikki wakes up from his coma to see the astonished doctors and relieved face of Shwetha.

Genre: Drama   Sci-Fi   Thriller