GOAT Movie Review: In one of the initial sequences in The Greatest of All Time, Gandhi (Vijay), the ‘GOAT’ of India’s Special Anti Terrorism Squad (SATS), is on a mission to obtain some information from some server in some star hotel in Thailand. Gandhi and his colleague Kalyan (Prabhudheva) spot a girl who is supposed to have the access card to the server, and the two obtain it in a swish. Even taking money out of an ATM needs a bit more effort than that. The specifics are of no importance here. The whole sequence is a set-up for the eventual payoff: Vijay flying out of the building in a parachute, like Batman. He lands next to his car to do his signature move of popping bubble gums and looking directly into the screen. Without a doubt, this scene elicits the expected response from his fans in theatres. The mission of Gandhi is of no importance here. The actual mission here is of director Venkat Prabhu, and his objective is to keep bringing out those cheers and hoots every few minutes with some callbacks, easter eggs, and cameos. The hurdle in the mission is that he has to achieve it without having a lot going on in the film. In a way, the operation is a success, but GOAT as a film… not so much.
The Greatest of All Time is a story of a special agent who loses his son during a mission, which ends his marriage and professional career. But when the son, who was presumed dead, returns, he brings with him a whole lot of problems, and Gandhi has to return to his squad to face his worst foe. Ironically, what could have been a liability in GOAT ends up becoming a strong aspect. Vijay has played the dual role of both father and son. The makers have used de-aging technology to make the star look younger, and it works. Except for a few sequences, the technical gimmick has yielded brilliant results. Vijay too has done the best of his abilities to make both characters work. On the other hand, the film is terribly underwritten with no real substance to make up for its three-hour runtime.
GOAT has many meta jokes and self-deprecating fun, typical of Venkat Prabhu films, . At one point, a character jibes at the plot of the film is similar to Vijayakanth’s blockbuster film Sathriyan (1990), but GOAT is ain’t a serious movie like the 90s film. It is a quintessential star vehicle which doesn’t bother about characters, depth, or even style. Venkat Prabhu has bet a lot on the younger version of Vijay. His quirks, eccentricity, and excess are supposed to make the audience go bonkers, like what happened with Ajith Kumar’s Vinayak Mahadev from Mankatha. Here, the results are middling because the film is underwritten. Sunil Menon (Mohan), the antagonist is a cardboard cutout, who laughs and smirks like how villains are supposed to do. The film is titled The Greatest of All Time because Gandhi is supposed to be the best in SATS’s history, but the film doesn’t have a single sequence that shows him to be that of what he does. More often than not, he is simply inept letting everyone around him die. So, much for being the GOAT.
The star vehicles have evolved to become a string of ‘mass’ Instagram reels, connected by a semblance of a story. Rajinikanth’s Jailer was a good example of it, where all the theatre moments worked because there was some deliberation with each such scene. There were those surprise sniper kills, a ruse to fool the villain, a trick to topple the van… and then comes the Superstar in slow motion to drop the crescendo. Here, we just keep getting the crescendo without the gradual foreplay. Superstar films in India suffer from the same problem as Hollywood’s superhero films. It has come down to getting the dopamine hit seeing the cameos, the easter eggs, the bigger universe, and the post-credit scene. It leaves one wondering how these hollow fan services will age making up to titles like The Greatest of All Time.
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