India boasts a magnificent cinematic heritage that spans generations. Over the years, the country has birthed a plethora of cinematic gems, each featuring talented actors who have breathed life into unforgettable stories. Yet, not all these cinematic treasures receive the global acclaim they so richly deserve.
For the majority, Indian cinema equates to Bollywood, leaving thousands of outstanding regional films like Tamil movies, Kannada Movies etc., in the shadows, unnoticed on the world stage. While I hold no grudge against Bollywood, my heart has been captivated by the enchanting narratives and spellbinding performances showcased in the regional languages of India and slowly getting popular on world stage. Hence, most of the tamil movies are now being dubbed in Hindi for wider viewership.
Today, I invite you to explore the vibrant world of Tamil cinema, as I unveil a carefully curated list of the 15 best Tamil movies of all time. It’s important to note that this list merely scratches the surface, for Tamil cinema boasts a rich tapestry of films waiting to be discovered. So, without further ado, let’s embark on a cinematic journey and celebrate the magic of best Tamil movies of all time.
Best Tamil Movies List –
1) Thillu Mullu(1981)
Director: K. Balachander
IMDb: 8.6/10
Cast: Rajinikanth, Thengai Srinivasan, Nagesh, Sowcar Janaki, Madhavi
Plot: It’s a comedy film in which Chandran lies to his boss that his mother is unwell to get a leave. But he gets caught during a match; so to save his position, he pretends to his boss that he has a twin brother who is good for nothing. The film is a hilarious ride of a common man forced to play as a con-man for his ends to meet. Top-notch acting by the cast with one of the best directors conveying the story seamlessly.
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2) Nayakan (1987)
Director: Mani Ratnam
IMDb: 8.7/10
Cast: Kamal Haasan,Nizhalgal Ravi, Saranya, Karthika, Dehli Ganesh.
Plot: Velu Nayakan, witnesses the brutal murder of his father, so kills a corrupt policeman and escapes to Mumbai, to become a gangster.
The story is full of violence, that was not seen in the 70s and 80s Tamil cinema. It tells a blunt message that anyone who takes the resources and law in their hand will end up getting destroyed by itself.
Ilayaraja gangster style score exactly delivers the shades of human life throughout the film. No doubt he is a genius, don’t miss watching this special gem.
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3) Thevar Magan (1992)
Director: Bharathan
IMDb: 8.8/10
Cast: Sivaji Ganesan, Nassar, Vadivelu, Kamal Haasan, Revathi
Plot: London-educated Saktivelu comes back to India and wants to start a restaurant business in Chennai. However, his father wants him to stay back and help the villagers. So, the film explores the dynamic relationship between father and son in the process of finding common ground.
Even after 25 years, this film makes the audience feel connected due to its raw and authentic narrative.
The intense scenes between Sivaji and Hassan will always stay in history books. The picturization and pace of the movie are so well made. Worth a watch.!
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4) Mahanadi (1994)
Director: Santhana Bharathi
IMDb: 8.5/10
Cast: Kamal Haasan, Sukanya, Poornam Viswanathan, Shobana Vignesh, S. N. Lakshmi
Plot: Krishnaswamy, an honest man, is deceived by doing a chit fund business and faces jail. While he goes through dire hardships in prison, his family crumbles in this period.
The film showcases the agony and pain the family goes through due to unseen circumstances.
It was critically acclaimed with being a box office hit.
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5) Anbe Sivam (2003)
Director: Sundar.C
IMDb: 8.7/10
Cast: Kamal Hassan, Madhavan, Kiran Rathod, Nassar
Plot: Anbarasu, an advertisement filmmaker, goes to Bhubaneswar on a business tour and gets stranded at an airport due to heavy rains. His life takes a shift when he meets Nallasivam, a co-passenger and makes him his friend. If Rajnikant staked claim to divinity on a right-wing plank with Baba, Kamal does it with assertions to rationalist-left rhetoric.
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6) Pithamagan (2003)
Director: Bala
IMDb: 8.4/10
Cast: Surya, Vikrama, Sangeetha, Lailaa
Plot: Siddhartha lacks social skills but circumstances bring him close to Kamala and Satya. When Satya is killed, Siddhartha decides to exact revenge for his murder. Performance-wise both male and female actors touch your hearts by their honest act.
The story carries you through Vikram’s expression and feelings at most of the parts. If it’s from Bala it’s beautifully brutal…
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7) Anniyan (2005)
Director: S.Shankar
IMDb: 8.2/10
Cast: Vikram, Sadha, Vivek, Prakash Raj, Nassar
Plot: Ramanujam, who suffers from splits personality disorder, works as a lawyer by day and a vigilante at night. He uses hints from the ‘Garuda Purana’ as his means to expose various antisocial elements. To explain multiple personality disorder in the simplest of terms, the director has tried his best so that the majority of the audience understand it.
Vikram transforms effortlessly through characters.
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8.Kattradhu Thamizh (2007)
Director: Ram
IMDb: 8.4/10
Cast: Jiiva, Anjali, Karunas Kazhagam, Perumal
Plot: The movie is about a common young Tamil-graduate, who is disappointed with the circumstances and emptiness of his job. He slowly loses his mental stability and becomes a psychopath. Director Ram leads you frankly into those amazing dimensions. Features such as direction, writing, performance, music, cinematography, and editing were immensely admired and appreciated by critics.
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9) Aaranya Kaandam (2011)
Director: Thiagarajan Kumararaja
IMDb: 8.6/10
Cast: Jackie Shroff, Sampath, Ravi Krishna, Guru Somasundaram, Master Vasanth, Yasmin Ponappa
Plot: Singaperumal still feels powerful though he has turned older. However, when he tries to beat his arch-enemy Gajendran with a sharp plan, a series of events leads to a run-chase situation. It’s the first neo-noir film in the Tamil industry.
The writing and acting are brilliant and the characters are fleshed out very well. Thiagarajan said that it’s a page out of the life of a gangster, not the whole story.
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10) Vazhakku Enn 18/9 (2012)
Director: Balaji Sakthivel
IMDb: 8.3/10
Cast: Muthuraman Sri, Urmila Mahanta, Mithun Murali, Manisha Yadav
Plot: Dinesh circulates an MMS of his neighbor Aarti’s private moments. When a furious Aarti threatens to report him, it sets into motion a game of love, deceit, and betrayal.
It is a stellar piece of filmmaking that will leave you shocked and even invigorated by the time it closes.
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11) Sathuranga Vettai (2014)
Director: H. Vinoth
IMDb: 8.1/10
Cast: Natraj, Ishaara Nair, Ponvannan, Piraisoodan, Ilavarasu
Plot: Gandhi, a skillful con man, successfully trails off several high-profile scams. A group of people, whom he had deceived, get together to catch him to settle scores. The twists and turns keep us guessing for most parts of the movie. Director Vinoth conveys a message about not people who con but one about those who get conned, why they get deceived and how they get deceived.
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12) Aruvi (2016)
Director: Arun Prabhu
IMDb: 8.7 /10
Cast: Aditi Balan, Lakshmi Gopalaswamy, Anjali Varadhan
Plot: Aruvi, a kind girl belonging to a middle-class family, faces the suffering due to troubled society and shares her story with a director who tries to use her to boost his show’s ratings.
An ambitious, solidly written satire that takes on different subjects and delivers very unexpected things.
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13) Maanagaram (2017)
Director: Lokesh Kanagaraj
IMDb: 8.1/10
Cast: Sundeep Kishan, Regina Cassandra, Charle, Munishkanth, Madhusudhanan
Plot: A man who comes to Chennai for an interview is beaten harshly. A small gang criminal abducts the son of a local gangster from his school for a ransom.
The fact that most of its crew are first-timers makes it all the more remarkable. An absorbing emotional thriller that is a must-watch with a solid story, expert handling and a seamless screenplay extracting the best of performances from the entire cast, Lokesh has knitted a captivating thriller that should be watched.
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14) Pariyerum Perumal (2018)
Director: Mari Selvaraj
IMDb: 8.8/10
Cast: Kathir, Anandhi, Yogi Babu
Plot: Pariyan, is a law undergraduate who comes from a lower caste tradition, and falls in love with Jothi, a girl from an upper caste. However, their relationship bothers Jothi’s family members who harass Pariyan to far ends.
Pariyerum Perumal is a hard-hitting anti-caste drama.
An outstanding tense drama with the message rising from the foreground, that presents the best narrative which deserves to be watched by all.
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15) Karuppu Durai (2019)
Director: Madhumita Sundararaman
IMDb: 8.8/10
Cast: Mu Ramaswamy, Nagavishal, Yog Japee, Badava Gopi, Ganesan Kaliamoorthy
Plot: An 80-year-old man is in a coma for three months. He suddenly wakes up and eavesdrops his family planning to kill him by performing an ancient euthanasia ritual.
A feel-good story st though bittersweet at times, but a film that is one of the year’s sweet surprises. The reason this film is entertaining is due to the chemistry between the old man and the young boy with an elegant character sketching. The movie received strong praise for its score and plot.
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16) Viduthalai: Part 1 (2023)
Director: Vetrimaaran
IMDb: 8.3/10
Cast: Soori, Vijay Sethupathi, Bhavani Sre
Plot: ‘Viduthalai’ set in 1987 begins with Kumaresan (Soori), a fresh recruit police constable arriving at his base camp which is situated in a dangerous forest area. He gets the post due to his hill driving prowess but is allocated menial jobs like cleaning toilets by the sadistic Officer in Charge (Chethan). The elusive Vaathiyaar (Vijay Sethupathi) the leader of a Naxalite group Makkal Padai is rebelling against the government’s plan to set up a mining operation and a special task force is formed to nab him dead or alive.
Kumaresan, who is good at heart, helps save the life of an old woman attacked by an animal and her granddaughter Paapa (Bhavani Sre) strikes a friendship with him that turns to love. In a twist of fate Kumaresan becomes the only one to see Vaathiyaar aka Perumal’s face and when Paapa’s life is in great danger from the police he embarks on a mission to capture the terrorist himself. What happens next is what ‘Viduthalai 1’ is on the surface level but there are many layers to it that have to be watched to be felt.
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17) DD Returns (2023)
Director: S. Prem Anand
IMDb: 6.9/10
Cast: Santhanam, Surbhi, Fefsi Vijayan
Plot: DD Returns is a horror comedy drama that revolves around the Fernandes family, who are haunted by ghosts. When a gang of thieves steals crores of rupees and needs a place to hide, they unwittingly enter the Fernandes’ home. The ghosts, who have been waiting for someone to play with, are eager to get to work. The thieves entered the house through the only entrance, but they could only leave if they found the one door that would allow them to escape.
If they don’t find the door, they will be trapped inside the house forever, or worse, killed by the ghosts. But Santhanam and his crew are not afraid of ghosts, and they can find the door and escape the house, no matter what the ghosts throw at them. The climax of the film was a foregone conclusion, but the journey to get there was the real story. The way the characters encountered the ghosts, the comic timing of Santhanam, and the crew’s handling of the supernatural elements were all essential to the film’s anticipation.
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18) Aneethi (2023)
Director: Vasanthabalan
IMDb: 7.9/10
Cast: Bharani, Suresh Chakravarthi, Arjun Chidambaram
Plot: A food delivery guy with a medical condition falls in love with Subbu, a housekeeper, whom he believes to be his world. However, trouble begins, when both get entangled in a case involving the death of an elderly woman.
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19) Por Thozil (2023)
Directors: Vignesh Raja, T. Senthil Paramasivam
IMDb: 8.1/10
Cast: R. Sarathkumar, Ashok Selvan, Nikhila Vimal
Plot: A bright but faint-hearted rookie cop has to overcome his fears in order to succeed in his first case which sees him partnered with a reclusive senior officer to catch a serial killer on the loose.
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20) Ayothi (2023)
Directors: Manthira Moorthy
IMDb: 8.3/10
Cast: R. Sarathkumar, Ashok Selvan, Nikhila Vimal
Plot: On their journey to Rameswaram, a family from North India gets involved in a series of mishaps until a stranger decides to help them out.
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Which is your favorite Tamil movie of all time? Let us know in the comments section!
