Top 10 Films of Vijay Sethupathi Everyone Should Watch

If there’s an actor in Tamil cinema who could be considered less of a “star” and more of the character artiste that he is, it’d have to be Vijay Sethupathi. Known affectionately as ‘Makkal Selvan’ (people’s treasure), his is among the most intriguing success stories in recent times. He didn’t just go knocking on the doors of Kollywood; he waited outside, doing whatever bit roles came his way and when the time arrived, he ripped the door away from its hinges with sheer raw talent that was impossible to ignore.

What makes him so special? It's the "realness." He’s an actor who vanishes into his roles, be he a soulful romantic, a bizarre kidnapper, a terrifyingly cool gangster or a woman finding out whom she really is. He is a chameleon who appears to pick scripts for the challenge, not the box office. His filmography is a mad tangle of high low, art house and blockbuster, and every single time, he gives us something to talk about. For a better understanding of the phenomenon that is Vijay Sethupathi, here are 10 films.

Vikram Vedha (2017)

This is the movie that made Vijay Sethupathi into a mass hero in his own image. A brilliantly assembled neo-noir thriller, Vikram Vedha has him for the first time playing a ruthless gangster (Vedha) to R. Madhavan’s “encounter” cop (Vikram). The narrative of the movie, built on a Vikramadityan-Vedalam folklore is a clever cat-and-mouse chase where Vedha, after giving up tells Vikram a story that blurs the line between good and evil. Sethupathi’s intro lights slow-mo-ing into the police station to surrender with that iconic BGM is a scene theatre audiences will always cherish.

He’s not just acting Vedha, he is Vedha. The salt-and-pepper beard, the crooked teeth, the gravelly voice — they’re only skin deep. Performance-wise, it’s all in his eyes– there is a menace to them at times, and at others they’re filled with a sort of strange philosophical sorrow. The much-touted “Oru kadhai sollata, sir?” (Shall I tell you a story?) is now a pop-culture catchphrase. Every interrogation scene is a master class in screen presence; he can sit calmly, totally unarmed and with all the power in the room. The second hero of the film is Sam C. S.’s score – Vedha’s theme BGM is going to be an anthem for swag, anti-hero cool!

'96 (2018)

If Vikram Vedha displayed his “mass,” ‘96 laid open his soul. This film is an unadulterated, poetic ache, a dreamy nostalgia trip for those who remember their first love. Sethupathi is K. Ramachandran, a reticent travel photographer who meets his high school sweetheart Jaanu (Trisha) at a school reunion, 22 years since they last met. He has few lines through most of the film but somehow manages to express a lifetime of feeling with his gentle manner, shy smiles and moist eyes. He does a beautiful, restrained counterpoint to Trisha’s more expressive Jaanu.

’96 is a film of moments. The moment he first lays eyes on Jaanu walking through the reunion is cinematic gold — a mix of shock, joy and fear. But as for the fan-favorite, pulse-racing moment, it’s when Jaanu, who is sitting in his apartment, sings “Yamunai Aatrile” — a song he had often wished to hear her sing back in school. His response — which is part in disbelief, pure happiness and profound sadness — is just heartbreakingly beautiful. Even the music, by Govind Vasantha — and most especially the track “Life of Ram” with its haunting violin themes — is not merely a soundtrack so much as it is the film’s heartbeat.

Super Deluxe (2019)

Super Deluxe is more than just a film, it’s a daring artistic statement and Vijay Sethupathi as Shilpa is its most courageous and celebrated symbol. He is Manickam, who turns into a transgender woman Shilpa and comes seeking home after becoming estranged from his wife and son many years earlier. Played by a less skilled actor, this could have been caricature. In Sethupathi’s, it was a National Award-winning embodiment of dignity, vulnerability and humanity. He carries graceful and does not once make Shilpa play it to the gallery -- in the way she wraps a saree or walks tentatively.

The movie is packed with iconic scenes, but it’s his time with his son Rasukutty that are the most powerful. The bit in the police station, when his son stands up for her to the snickering cops, is a tearjerker. But the most cherished sequence is Shilpa’s last, tearful breakdown. Pain, judgment and violence she would have known already but this was the straw that broke her back — and she finally cries, not as Manickam or Shilpa but just a vulnerable human on the edge of everything crashing down. Yuvan Shankar Raja’s BGM for Shilpa is reverberating, giving her character a divine and tragic touch.

Soodhu Kavvum (2013)

This is the movie that announced the arrival of the “quirky” Vijay Sethupathi and turned him into a poster boy for second wave of good cinema in Tamil Nadu. Soodhu Kavvum is a slap-happy, oddball black comedy in which he portrays Das, an amateurish, middle-aged kidnapper who lives by his "kidnapping rules". He even has an imaginary girlfriend Shalu (a mannequin head on a stick, it’s hysterical), a rusty grey van and a motley bunch of utter incompetents. Sethupathi is a blast as the always dour Das, who applies maximum professionalism to his ridiculous vocation.

The film’s story picks up when they accidentally kidnap the son of a politician, like any idiot would-be kidnapper worth his salt who was already attempting to orchestrate his own kidnapping. The confusion that follows is pure comic gold. Fan-favorite moments include every moment of interaction he shares with Shalu, whom he believes to be his soulmate and the dry manner in which he deadpans sentences like “Arumai Pragasam…en manga?” (What kind of name is that?). Santhosh Narayanan’s music, particularly the song “Kaasu Panam Dhuddu Money” had caught the film’s offbeat cool and ‘gaana’ vibe.

Naduvula Konjam Pakkatha Kaanom (2012)

Loosely based on one of the great bizarre true stories, this film is a master class in how Vijay Sethupathi can turn comedic gold out of a single monotone line, repeated ad nauseam. He is Prem, a young man who suffers a blow to the head with a cricket ball two days before his wedding. The result? He suffers from retrograde amnesia, erasing his memory of the past year, during which he became engaged. He recognizes his friends, but he just can’t recall for the life of him who that girl he is about to marry really is. His friends then go through a (pa-pa) pardon-me-for-saying-so mission to marry him off without anyone getting knowledge of it.

The movie’s humor is purely situational, centered on Prem’s dead-eyed bewilderment. His repeated, earnest questions—"Ennaachu?" (What happened?), "Dhanalakshmi yaaru?" (Who is Dhanalakshmi?), and the classic "En... enna... love pannara?" (She... she... loves me?) — sent audiences into gales of laughter. Where Sethupathi really shines is his delivery — he plays the confused man with 100 per cent seriousness, and somehow it got funnier every time. The movie, shot on a low budget, was a sleeper success, proving that all you need is an idea and a leading man who nails it.

Pizza (2012)

The film that actually began it all. 2012 was Sethupathi’s breakout year, and Pizza was the main course. This low-budget, high-concept horror film by Karthik Subbaraj was a blockbuster. Michael (Sethupathi) is a pizza delivery boy who lives with his girlfriend Anu, who wants to write short horror stories. Michael (who is scared of anything unnatural) gets sent to deliver a pizza at the ‘haunted’ bungalow, and all hell breaks loose. The first 45 minutes are a tension masterclass, with Michael stuck inside the shadowy, spooky house.

Sethupathi is great as the “terrified” everyman and tenterhooks audiences gripping their seats. But the film is best known for its mind-blowing, fan-loved climax. [Spoiler Alert] Not a single person saw it coming that the whole ghost story was a ruse — a set-up for Michael and Anu to steal the diamond. We still discuss the film’s non-linear “post-credits” scene that wraps up the whole heist. What made the horror so real, a lot of us felt was Santhosh Narayanan’s downtempo, minimalist score.

Aandavan Kattalai (2016)

This movie, directed by M. Manikandan, is a quiet masterpiece and the quintessential “Vijay Sethupathi” movie of them all. He is Gandhi, a decent man in debt who seeks to go to London to make money. With the help of a crooked agent, he cheats on his passport application and makes up a "wife" ("Karmeghakuzhali"). But when his visa is denied, the lie sticks. He soon has a real chance to go to London, but he now needs to get this fake wife’s name off his passport. The only way? A legal divorce. This requires him to track down an actual woman with that specific name (Ritika Singh), and convince her to “divorce” him.

The movie's an ingenious and sincere satire about the catastrophic implications of one "small" fib. It locates humor in some excruciatingly relatable situations: the byzantine bureaucratic hellhole of government offices, the sheer absurdity of Chennai landlords when he looks for houses and the bizarre/funny/sad farce situation at family court. The chemistry between Sethupathi and Yogi Babu in the first half is marvelous, but the movie’s soul is Sethupathi. He portrays Gandhi with an “innate decency,” and mild guilt, that is really quite fetching. It’s an intelligent, straightforward and affecting movie that shows you don’t need “mass” to leave a massive impression.

Sethupathi (2016)

This was Vijay Sethupathi’s first out-and-out “mass” action film in a police uniform and he totally nailed it. He is Inspector Sethupathi, a rugged, honest and sharp cop in Madurai. And what makes the film special and exceptional is that it gets both the “mass” heroics, and family life, very right. He’s more than a cop; he is also a loving husband (to a wonderful Remya Nambeesan) and a doting father to two kids. Their family chemistry is so organic and delightful that you immediately care for their well-being.

The plot of the film changes gear when he clashes with Vaathiyaar (Vela Ramamoorthy), an influential local don. All the elements of a fine cop movie can be found in the film — biting dialogues, fight scenes well-choreographed and an investigation that’s agile. The scene just before break after Sethupathi's gun gets sabotaged inadvertently leads to a gunshot incident -- that is one high-Tension block. Nivas K. Prasanna’s music was well received, particularly because of the “Hey Mama” track, which visualized their perfect concept of a “cool cop.” In rangastalam, he proved that he can be a family man and at the same time, a mas hero.

Kaadhalum Kadandhu Pogum (2016)

A remake of the Korean movie “My Dear Desperado,” this is an odd-couple romance that turns out to be more odd couple than romance. Sethupathi is Kathir, a small-time wannabe rowdy who has just been freed from prison. He ends up renting a small house next door to Yazhini (Madonna Sebastian), an intelligent, educated IT professional who has been recently laid off from her job. The story of two people from different sides of the tracks becoming unlikely unspoken friends, the movie is a slow, kind and realistic study of life.

This is not a movie about grand gestures; it’s about small moments of contact. The scene that strikes a chord with fans is when Kathir and Yazhini decide to get drunk on the rooftop in their state of despair. As they drink, the film classic Kadhalikka Neramillai is showing in a neighbouring television and forming a lovely parallel. Sethupathi is superlative as the scrappy Kathir, who attempts to “act” like he doesn’t care but in reality is probably the most caring guy you’ll meet. Santhosh Narayanan’s soulful jazz-inflected soundtrack, particularly “Ka Ka Ka Po,” lends the film its singularly urban and hopeful feel.

Viduthalai Part 1 (2023)

In the gritty, uncompromising Vetrimaaran epic, Vijay Sethupathi is The Teacher (Vetrimaaran even credits him simply as “Teacher”), the shadowy figurehead of a “people’s army” in pursuit of justice for rural protests. What’s remarkable is that he has very little screen time in Part 1, and yet his shadow falls over the whole film. He is the “ghost” in Operation Ghosthunt, because he is being hunted by all of the police. His depiction is void of all “mass” accretions and embodies a cool, violent idealogue.

In his first scene, when he is shown instructing children in the forest, it also seems to be Thomad’s quiet rebuttal of the “terrorist” label the police have pasted on him. But the most resonant moment for him is his capture. It’s also hard to look away from the raw, brutal and extended fight we see him have in the rain — a stunning piece of filmmaking that reveals his character’s determination but also desperation. The music of Ilaiyaraaja, specifically the wafting “Onnoda Nadantha” song, presents a lovely sad landscape of the land and its people. He is set up for Part 2, but in these few scenes he made an indelible character.