Vaanchinathan is a 2001 Indian Tamil-language crime action film directed by Shaji Kailas in his Tamil debut. The script was written by Liaquat Ali Khan. It stars Vijayakanth, Sakshi Shivanand, Ramya Krishnan and Prakash Raj in pivotal roles. The film was released on 14 January 2001.^[1]

This article needs an improved plot summary. (August 2023)

Vanchinathan is a cop who has been transferred from Gujarat. Chidambaram is a media mogul who thrives on chaos and confusion, which will help him boost sales of his paper. Their enmity becomes personal when Chidambaram challenges Vanchinathan to arrest him when he cleverly commits a murder in broad daylight in front of Vanchinathan. After that, Vanchinathan kills two corrupt officers for assisting bad guys. In retaliation Chidambaram poisons Vanchinathan's sister. Thereby Vanchinathan shoots Chidambaram and blames it on Chidambaram' younger brother.

The team had initially agreed terms with Suresh Gopi to feature in a pivotal role, but his unavailability led to team casting Prakash Raj.^[2] Soundarya was to appear in the film, but later opted out due to unknown reasons.^[3] Shilpa Shetty had also signed on to star in the film.^[4] Likewise, Nadhiya was expected to make a return to Tamil films through the project, but eventually went against doing so.^[5]

The film is named after the Indian independence fighter Vanchinathan. A fight scene involving Vijayakanth, Ramya Krishnan and rowdies was shot in a set erected at AVM studios.^[6] The song sequence, 'Amul Baby', was shot at New Zealand.^[7]

Music was composed by Karthik Raja, collaborating with Vijayakanth for the second time after Alexander.^[8] The background score was done by Rajamani who reused score from Malayalam film Narasimham in some scenes.

Rajitha of Rediff.com wrote "But the masala is appetising and in the final analysis, that is all that counts".^[9] Similarly, Lollu Express claimed that film is a "collection of scenes from actor's previous movies".^[10] The Hindu wrote "Liyakath Ali Khan's story and screenplay are crisp and action-packed" and also noted " sequences remind you of the Parthiban starrer `Abhimanyu' or Vijayakanth's own Vallarasu".^[11] Krishna Chidambaram of Kalki praised the director for maintaining the tempo from the beginning to end while also praising the fury in abolishing bribery and corruption is perfectly reflected with seriousness but felt the film was directed unrealistically and called it average.^[12] Distributors who had bought the film had incurred heavy losses.^[13] Post-release it was rumoured that footage of two heroines have been deleted to reduce the timing which earned criticism.^[14][15]