of Puli Kali artists from Thrissur were employed by Shankar as background dancers. In November 2006, sequences featuring Rajinkanth, Saran and Vivek were shot at the Pune Junction railway station. Filming of a key portion involving Rajinikanth and Vivek took place in the Victoria Public Hall building in Chennai. A fight sequence and the song "Athiradi" were filmed at Binny Mills. The sets for the song were made bearing resemblance to the city of Venice. For the climax scenes, which were filmed at the Magarpatta city SEZ towers, Rajinikanth tonsured his head. The scenes where Sivaji gets the money he transferred to his friends by forgery were filmed in New York City. The completion of those scenes in February 2007 marked the end of the principal photography. The climactic fight between Sivaji and Adiseshan was filmed at Vels University. K. V. Anand told Shobha Warrier of Rediff.com that the portions other than the songs and action sequences were completed in 65 days. Themes and influences Many critics stated that the theme of Sivaji has been inspired from Shankar's previous films Gentleman (1993) and Mudhalvan (1999). The film deals with the concept of corruption and money laundering and how the film's protagonist employs methods to get rid of those elements. Gopinath Rajendran of The New Indian Express compared the film's title character to Robin Hood for being a hero "who takes from the rich and passes it on to the poor". Sivaji, who is a software engineer is frustrated with the corruption in India which is shown in the scene where he watches the pitiable condition of poor people stating that: "The rich get richer, the poor get poorer". Sivaji's love for his country is also illustrated in a scene where he is advised by his uncle to go back to abroad but he says "Where else will I go? This is home." Music After some re-recording of the background score in Paraguay, A.R. Rahman had been to London for additional re-recording. A month and a half prior to the film's official soundtrack release, three songs from the soundtrack were leaked into the Internet. The songs, however, were only unofficial with low quality, where the official versions were composed slightly different and sung by different artists. Release The television rights of the film were sold to Kalaignar TV for 4 crore. The film's distribution rights, as distributed by AVM Productions to