Best Tamil Films of 2024: Complete List of Must-Watch Hits

If you stepped in to the year expecting a romp with the usual 500-crore monsters, you probably walked out feeling woozy and disappointed. 2024 was the year of the storyteller, not the titans. It was a year where the so-called “big” movies fell on their faces at best, leaving it to the smaller, braver and infinitely more interesting films to wrestle the mic out of hands that didn’t deserve to hold it in order to shine.

It almost felt as though Tamil cinema inched itself into a corner, collectively took a deep breath and sought authenticity. We had fewer slow-motion punches, and more gut-punches. We were given raw, flawed characters instead of larger-than-life superheroes. Amid brutal revenge sagas and aching biopics, quiet art-house reflections and razor-sharp sports dramas, the movies that really impressed were the ones with something to say — and said it in style. So here’s a reminder of 10 movies that defined for us.

Maharaja

If you ever need to describe the idea of a "sleeper hit," just mention Maharaja. This was a movie that didn’t just stroll into theaters. It detonated. The plot is, on the face of it, a simple one, almost absurd: A lowly barber named Maharaja (Vijay Sethupathi) turns up at a police station and demands that his “Lakshmi” — it’s actually a plastic dustbin — has been stolen. The police are puzzled, then irritated and finally intrigued when he starts talking about a fat bribe. But director Nithilan Saminathan plays a master game, threading two other timelines through this offhand complaint and leaving it up to an audience to assemble a puzzle that is nothing less than soul-shredding.

The screenplay is the genius of Maharaja. It’s a virtual masterclass in non-linear storytelling, each reveal landing like a body blow. There are still favorite small details fans remember: Maharaja meticulously looking for “a lump shaped like an ear” on the back of every cop in the station, one discreet clue to his actual investigation. Or the gut-wrenching beat in the climax when he merely tests an old chair to see if it will hold his daughter before having her sit down — a small act of fatherly concern amid unimaginable trauma. This is more than a roamu-thatha revenge movie, this is the sad slow demise of a man who turns the system into a weapon he can’t controle and Vijay Sethupathy, with his simmering low-ley performance as an overprotective father pushed to the brink will be remembered for ages.” All supported by Ajaneesh Loknath’s haunting electric BGM.

Amaran

We all heard about Major Mukund Varadarajan, but Amaran made us experience it. It was the biopic 2024 deserved, one that refrained from jingoism in favor of something much stronger: real, unadulterated emotion. The movie, its story beautifully recounted from the point of view of his wife, Indhu (a radiant Sai Pallavi), follows their life together from sweet college courtship to a hard-hitting life of service. Sivakarthikeyan plays career best role here, taking forward the legacy of his comic hero image by entirely becoming a man and shouldering the calmness, warmth as well iron-willed Maj Mukund. It’s so complete a transformation that you’re not seeing SK; you are watching a soldier, a husband and a father.

Loaded with graven moments that stay with you. The interval block — an intense, brilliantly staged recreation of the actual 19-hour Qazipathri operation — is a technical marvel. But it’s the hushed ones, that pack the biggest punch. There is magic in Sai Pallavi-Sivakarthikeyan chemistry — their “ennada, enna” exchanges sound like you are eavesdropping on a real couple. It’s a tear-jerker of an airport farewell scene, brought home with all the lyricism that G.V. Prakash pours into his music. That Amaran is way more than a war film comes across when songs like “Hey Minnale”, ”Vennilavu Saaral” don’t fall into the category of just tracks, but add to the heartbeat of what is Amaran: an unforgettable canvas that waves love and sacrifice.

Meiyazhagan

In a particularly vigorous and kinetic year, Meiyazhagan was a quiet warm hug. Another “conversation film,” this one also from C. Prem Kumar, the director of “96”: a movie that believes we viewers can sit, listen and feel. Arulmozhi Varman (Arvind Swamy) has been away from his village for 20 years, and returns home only because he has to — a family wedding is imminent. There, he is pursued by his impossibly lovestruck and unendingly affectionate cousin (Karthi) who he just cannot remember the name of. The entire movie takes place on this one long night of rediscovery as Arul must face the broken family bonds and buried nostalgia he’s kept repressed.

It is a movie of small, miraculous gestures. KarthiFans fell in love with Karthi's role, Meiyazhagan — a man who embodies the rural-flavouredness and unconditional love that Arul has lost. Awesome scene where Meiyazhagan enters to the village with his Ganga-Thotakalai (Jallikattu bull) which is named as “Dhoni”. In the best way, the film is a “talky” — each conversation pulling Arul (and us) further back to a place of healing. The final, heartbreaking scene of Arul finally learning the name is a tour de force. And all through, Govind Vasantha’s music is the “unsung hero,” a rich, 60-minute-plus score that becomes the film’s second narrator and transports us through Thanjavur’s roads and into an unsaid heart.

Lubber Pandhu

Mr. Lubber Pandhu uses local cricket’s dusty competitiveness to tell a much bigger story of ego, love and deeper caste politics. Plot The film is about the rivalry between Anbu, a powerful young Dalit cricketer who used to play as a "Guest player" for other teams and Gethu, an aged "MARAVIDA NAATU KAARAN" from VANNIYAN community but he won't let Anbu in his team. This intensely personal sports-drama turns even more complex when Anbu falls in love with Gethu’s daughter.This is not your average sports movie. When Nassar’s character is playing cricket, the matches are “explosive,” shot with all the tension of a life-or-death battle — because, for these characters, they are. 

But the most potent moments occur off the field. There is so much quiet, potent visual comment (the reinforcement of an idealistic political leader without a loudspeaker to project his ideals; the multiple appearances of the Ambedkar Memorial in the distance while Anbu’s town status remains that as “guest”) in the film. The most talked-about scene? Gethu’s wife Yasodhai, annoyed with this fixation of men drives a tractor and ploughs the cricket pitch in anger – an image so strong that it is used as the title card. With a crackling Sean Roldan BGM, Lubber Pandhu proved that you can deliver sharp social commentary inside a thrilling, entertaining package.

Garudan

On the surface, Garudan is your typical story of friendship, loyalty and corruption. But in action, it is a raw, visceral and star-making extravaganza of a movie for Soori. He portrays Sokkan, a moppet who grows up to unswervingly serve his childhood rescuer, Karuna (Unni Mukundan), an orphaned boy involved in the rough justice of river-bandit society. Sokkan turns into the "Garudan," a protector who keeps his master surrounded. It is caught in a bind with the loyalty being shared by Karuna’s best friend Aadhi (Sasikumar) who looks up to Sokkan as a brother than a server. The existence of this fragile triangle is shattered when his own conscience and loyalty to Sokkan are put to the test by a corrupt minister’s land-grab scheme arriving in town.

Garudan is entirely about the transformation of Soori. We see him transform from a submissive, even doggish follower into a man of ferocious determination. The movie's piece de resistance is the terrific interval block: As a brawl breaks out, Sokkan, as if he’s possessed by god himself, grabs an aruval and delivers shockingly brutal justice. It is the moment Soori the “comedian” disappears, and Soori the “actor” appears. The red-brown-tinged dust of a brick kiln is the masterful ground for the climax, his rage mirrored in nothing less than earth. And here Yuvan Shankar Raja’s BGM is the icing on the cake, accentuating even a silent stare or a brutal clash in this intense rural drama.

Lover

Lover was “brutally honest” in a way no film in 2024 had been, or was uncomfortable to acknowledge as real. It’s a movie that will either leave you nodding in painful recognition or squirming in your seat. It follows the slow, painful breakup of a six-year relationship between Arun (Manikandan) and Divya (Sri Gouri Priya). Arun is a “red-flag situation” — insecure, possessive, alcoholic — but he’s also deeply in love. The movie ably portrays their caustic pattern: a blowout, the fallout, a tearful mea culpa, a short truce and repeat.

And what makes Lover a fans’ favorite is its refusal to be a “movie. The back-and-forth sounds disturbingly true to life, rife with the circular logic and petty grievances you just might recognize from an actual couple’s argument. One of those memorable moments that had audiences buzzing is when Divya finally releases,”No, maybe this is who I always was,” taking her identity back from his controlling narrative. The film also mines why Arun is who he is, leading to a powerful showdown with his father that reveals a cycle of intergenerational trauma. Sean Roldan’s “magical” album, and especially the haunting sound of “Thaensudare,” is the right accompaniment to the exuberant highs and depressing lows of a love that’s dying.

Viduthalai Part 2

If Viduthalai Part 1 was Kumaresan’s tale, Part 2 is Perumal, a.k.a. Vaathiyaar (Vijay Sethupathi)’s story.” Vetrimaaran resumes the screenplay exactly where he left, vaathiyaar is captured and being taken in a police vehicle squad. Split off from the film’s narrative in the present is a taut, claustrophobic trek through the forest among and between those of us moving and controlling up high in blue uniforms. Vaathiyaar recounts his “origin story” (a transformation from fellow savior to renegade), and with it, his relationship with Mahalakshmi (Manju Warrier), in the wings.

It is a dense, talky and trenchant movie. While some critics took the theatrical cut to task for “choppy” flashbacks, those who caught the “Director’s Cut” (a.k.a. combined IFFR version) swear by it as a “razor-sharp” political drama. The highlights aren’t in action, but tension: the bureaucratic chess match between Rajiv Menon’s and Gautham Menon’s characters is as suspenseful as any shootout. But the linchpin of the movie is Soori’s Kumaresan, now a jaded, disillusioned bystander. Kumaresan can barely accept his loss; when the system deals him one final, corrupt blow and he rams his jeep down the street in a towering rage, it’s a tragic and perfect end to his character arc, all accompanied by the old-school soulful strains of Ilaiyaraaja.

Vaazhai

Vaazhai, by Mari Selvaraj, is hardly a film; it’s an open wound. Drawn from his own childhood, it’s a “profoundly aching” bio-drama about Sivanaindhan, a young Dalit boy sold into back-breaking child labor at a banana plantation. The “vaazhai” (banana plant) is a representation of prosperity in Tamil – and Mari wonderfully points out the irony — this prosperi ty is based on the exploitation of Sivanaindhan’s broken body. The only way he can escape is going to school, where he harbors a crush on his teacher (Nikhila Vimal) that’s not just innocent but saving.

The film is “gut-wrenchingly painful” in how it sets the universal childhood joys of bickering with my best friend Sekar about whether Rajini is bigger or Kamal against the horrific reality of his weekends. And though the South Indian cinematographer Theni Eswar isn’t completely successful when it comes to camera work, he gets at something rude and organic: the lush, green prison not just of the plantation but also of its repeating visual metaphors (a dead stuffed calf is one), which haunt the film. The story is profoundly personal, with Mari Selvaraj explaining that his own crush on a teacher saved him from ending up on the real-life truck which had crashed (and where the other laborers had perished). It’s a difficult watch, but essential viewing “lightened” with a score that may well be an adrenaline-overdrive perfection from Santhosh Narayanan: “achingly brilliant,” “uncompromising.”

Kottukkaali

The Adamant Girl is pure, concentrated art-house cinema that requires your dead focus. It’s a road-trip movie, but not the pleasant kind. Meena (a brilliant Anna Ben) is in love with a man from an oppressed caste. Her family, in patriarchal fashion, determines she is “possessed” by a spirit. They make her fiancé Paandi (Soori) take her and the whole family on a dark journey to seer to get the "demon" exorcised. The film is a slow, surgical and tense exploration of how superstition and caste are deployed as weapons to control a woman’s body and choice.

The film’s strength is in its visual “show, don’t tell” language. No BGM, just the very unsettling ambient sound of the van, the wind and boiling, unarticulated family tensions. A critically well-discussed metaphor is a rooster tied to a heavy stone that the family takes with them for sacrifice: an obvious, tragically fated stand-in for Meena. It is, undoubtedly, Paandi’s outbreak of violence — slapping the relatives silly, and underlining it with one to his own forehead — that constitutes the most shocking sequence in the film. The ambiguous endha of the film is a masterstroke: Paandi sees the seer “curing” another woman and, from his point-of-view, the camera starts to wobble.Worried about his trust. It’s a divisive, difficult and unshakable film.

Bloody Beggar

A dark-comedy of Nelson-ian proportions, Bloody Beggar was the year's biggest surprise – a chaotic, gory and funny one, at that. Kavin, on his roll of picking good scripts is seen as a witty, smart and absolutely cheating beggar who uses his mendicant networks for small cons that let him survive. Invited to a “free meal” at the huge creepy old mansion, he becomes stuck inside, in the middle of a family brawl (of “Ready or Not” flavor) amid which there’s this weird assortment of zealous who want to kill one another for an enormous inheritance.

It’s a “madhouse” in the most positive sense. Kavin’s comic timing is spot on, especially in scenes with Redin Kingsley, who stars as a ghost only he can see. But just when you’ve settled in for a zany horror-comedy, the film serves up an “awesome and completely unexpected” curveball. We learn why in a tragic flashback, as the beggar’s wife was killed in a hit-and-run years earlier. The twist? The individual driving the vehicle is one of the heirs in the house.” It goes from being a slapstick comedy to the most badass revenge-killing spree, just like that, and you are giddy with how that tonal switch comes. It’s a daring and one-of-a-kind ride, and it’s wild fun.