Huchcha (2001)

The hero is the terror of his college: rough, violent and answerable to no one except his elder brother. When a quiet, devout new student arrives from a priest's family, he falls for her with the same intensity he brings to everything else, and his clumsy, forceful courtship frightens her before she slowly sees another side of him. Just when happiness seems possible, an attack leaves him badly injured, and the film takes a sharp and tragic turn into the world of a mental asylum. Huchcha is the Kannada remake of Bala's Tamil film Sethu (1999), and it made Sudeep a star. His character's nickname in the film, Kiccha, gave him the nickname by which fans still call him. The film was a major hit and its sad, intense ending became one of the most talked-about in Kannada cinema of the period.