The film starts with Suryanarayana Varma a.k.a. Unni, who hails from a royal family, returning from prison. He had killed the son of a large family who are now searching for him. Unni's parents enroll him in a law college in Chennai. There he meets Meenakshi and gets into conflicts with her brother Siva, and Siva's enemy Muthu. Meenakshi eventually falls in love with Unni. Once Meenakshi's family finds out about her love for Unni and they visit his house for a marriage request. But Unni has a past he can't escape, which he narrates his flashback to Meenakshi.
He fell in love with a woman named Aswathy, a medical student. Aswathy's parents are dead, and she lives with her uncles Karimparakal Prabhakaran, Sudhakaran and Divakaran and their family. Prabhakaran wants to gain her inheritance by arranging a marriage between his eldest son Prakashan and Aswathy. Aswathy accidentally gets into the autorickshaw of Unni when she is going to meet Prakashan. During the ride, Unni falls in love with her and delays bringing Aswathy to her destination.
She becomes fed up with him and decides to tell her uncles. She and her uncles plan to make fun of him and calls Unni to her house. Unni gets shocked to see Aswathy's uncles, and realises that he had hit them before. They beat him very badly and throw him out. She falls for him after he recovers. They decide to get married, but her uncles object and during a fight between Unni, Prakashan and their henchmen, Unni kills Prakashan in a fit of rage and in self-defence. For this, he is jailed for 5 years.
Back to present, Unni's father makes him believe Aswathy has been married off to an NRI settled in Gulf, so he gets engaged to Meenakshi. Meanwhile, Aswathy calls Unni, telling him that she is still waiting for him. He goes to Kerala to find her, and tries to escape with her in a truck. Chased by Aswathy's family and Meenakshi's family they are saved finally by the autorickshaw drivers and get married.[11]
The film was released on 14 April 2005 coinciding with Vishu.[12][13] It was released alongside and faced competition from the Prithviraj-starrer Athbhutha Dweepu, the Mohanlal-starrer Chandrolsavam and the Jayaram-starrer Alice in Wonderland.[14] Made on a budget of ₹2.5 crores, Kochi Rajavu was a commercial success.[15][16][17] It grossed ₹2.804 crore from three days and ₹4.01 crore in 21 days from 44 screens with a distributor's share of ₹1.73 Crore.[18] It ended its commercial performance with the verdict "average" and thus emerged the year's Vishu winner.[18]
