Cocktail [2010] Malayalam - Butterfly On A Wheel [aka Shattered] [2007] Canada

Ravi Abraham (Anoop Menon) is one of the key brains behind the success of a construction firm. He has rivals within and outside the office, jealous of his success. At home, he has a blissful life with his wife Parvathy (Samvrutha Sunil) and daughter Ammu. But things go terribly wrong for Ravi and Parvathy one fine morning, with a stranger named Venkitesh (Jayasurya), who asks for a lift in their car. For the first few minutes, Venky appears to be a naive mild guy but his tone changes soon and he begins to blackmail the couple, telling them that their daughter is kidnapped and within one call the babysitter will kill her. They are forced to obey several things one after the other. First Venky asks them to withdraw the entire deposit from their bank account. Later Venky sets fire to the currency notes in a suitcase and throws it into a river along with their wallets. Venky asks for more money, Ravi sells his wrist watch worth one lakh rupees, for a sum of just 6000. As the day progresses both Ravi and Parvathy are made to drive around and do many things, including leaking Ravi's firm's top notch business plan to the rival group, bargaining with a sex worker etc. Venky also traps them in a lodge where he tries to make advances to Parvathy but stops short of proceeding further. At last, towards the late hours of the night, they reach Ravi's boss's house. Ravi is asked to shoot his boss if he wants to have his daughter alive. Ravi enters the house and to his surprise finds his colleague Devi there.

Part of the drama unveils to the audience now: it is Devi's house, Venky is her husband, Ravi and Devi have been having an extramarital affair. In the subsequent few minutes, we realise that all this was a drama plotted and enacted by Venky and Parvathy, both hurt by their partners` deceit, to teach their partners the pain they themselves went through.

The last shot of the movie has Ravi and Parvathy an year later at a hospital for the infirm. They see a paralyzed Devi, a victim of a suicide attempt, taken care of by the affectionate Venky.

Where was it from?
A perfect family's dynamic is ruined by a kidnapper's brutally efficient plot.

Director:  Mike Barker 
Writer:  William Morrissey 
Stars: Pierce Brosnan, Maria Bello and Gerard Butler

The movie was met with critical acclaim. Even though Cocktail could not manage a bumper initial, the movie picked up after a couple of days of the release. Cocktail has the dubious distinction of raising a controversy about the box-office performance. In a box-office analysis, Sify said that the film did not do well in the box office. However, an article in Expressbuzz.com, published some days after its release, said that the film is a "sleeper hit" and had a "dream run at the box office".According to Malayalamcinemanews.com, the official website of Kerala Film Producers Association, the film's distributor's share is between  40 lakhs and  1 crore, which makes the film only an average grosser. I wonder whether Mike and William ever found out about this stuff.