The Greatest of All Time Review..!!

Directed by Venkat Prabhu and produced by Kalpathi S Aghoram, The Greatest of All time is a very special film for fans of Thalapathy Vijay since this could be the penultimate film for the star in a full-fledged role. In the beginning of 2024, he has announced about quitting films to focus entirely on politics. Fans wanted to celebrate every moment of their favorite hero in theatres and guess what, the film has the actor in a dual role. The USP of the film is ‘Thalapathy vs Ilayathalapathy’. There were several rumors surrounding the film, that the film is indeed Science fiction and some expressed their concerns about the theme, whether it connects with the rural audience or not. Venkat Prabhu was coming after Custody & Manmada Leelai, both were box-office debacles. But the anticipation was sky high since this is the brand Vijay film.

Venkat Prabhu movies generally have a quick and basic set piece to introduce the hero. This isn’t any different from The GOAT but there is a catch this time. The idea of introducing the SATS team is inspired from a recent blockbuster and the cuts are fast, even for the action sequences. But the irony is that the film has a 3-hour long duration and the director never takes time to establish the characters. He could have taken time on a few segments for the audience to get invested in the characters. The opening scene suddenly shifts to a song and then after a few humor episodes, the audience witness another mission that gets done in a little time. Importantly, humor part takes away the significance of the plot. For example, there is one scene 20 minutes into the movie, where the lead character, ‘Gandhi’ is confronted by his wife suspecting an extra marital affair.

Now this is a funny scene, where he had to reveal about his confidential work nature to save his marriage. The director wanted this scene to be placed as the crucial juncture that leads to the major inciting incident in the story. The follow-up was just rash & loose writing that bogged down the serious nature of the subject. The audience are just into the film which leads them to question whether ‘Gandhi’ & the SATS team are that slopy.? What is even worse is that, they have added a few comical situations at the pretext of a mission. The humor episodes that reminded us of earlier Vijay movies is not the problem here but why would they make the central plot so silly just for the sake of comedy. Maybe, they wanted to try the ‘Family Man’ approach but failed miserably here. We have seen several movies that dealt with spies but here, they have neither discussed about the SATS team nor conveyed the core plot element properly. There is no thoughtful insight into the SATS team and they looked like a bunch of incompetent professionals. Since the director didn’t set any of the basic things straight, there were a lot of confusions throughout the film regarding the motives of the antagonists, alongside lazily written characters including protagonists and distorting screenplay to their convenience.

Although the film is 3 hours long, it doesn’t move at a snail pace. The director has ensured that there are a lot events stuffed in the screenplay. Only if they have taken time to establish the characters and develop the plot points, this could have been a completely different film. The major piquing element happens 1 hour into the movie and the plot development that leads to ‘Ilayathalapathy’ lacked sensible writing. Even one of the antagonists has a very weak arc that questions the true intentions of the maker behind the film. The film was made for the gallery and the director never thought of giving a purpose to other characters. Like mentioned before, even the protagonist, Gandhi was a lazily written character who made various judgement errors as per the convenience of the story. The interval mission was marred by the predictability issue due to the rushed development of the plot through an earlier song sequence. Yet, the episode had all the mass appeal due to the massive screen presence of ‘Vijay’. Again, the post intermission scene has a shoddy flashback portion that further dents the story’s progression. The ‘Thalapathy’ vs ‘Ilayathalapathy’ face-off was the strong point of the film.

This was something that was explored in the latter half but huge plot holes and lazy writing brought down the experience. As mentioned before, it was unsettling to see the serious nature of the subject further dented by the placement of songs in the second half. Certainly, the director wanted the audience to keep the focus on the antagonist but it just didn’t help his case. The biggest twist in the second half was totally plain stupid, which brings back the question, was the SWAT team such incompetent & sloppy.? Yet, ‘Vijay’ in two different avatars totally nailed his part and everything in the movie rested on his shoulders. He was in almost every scene and that was probably the saving grace of the movie. The film was a mixture of elements to celebrate the star rather than a well packaged film. That being said, the post intermission de-aging sequence is the only technical glitch about the character of ‘Ilayathalapathy‘ in the whole film. VFX and frames still were a hit and miss though.  The background music in the intermission, climax and mid-credit scene were good while the rest of the music department was mediocre at best. Finally, ‘The GOAT’ is an undercooked film that has only celebratory moments for fans of actor ‘Vijay’.