The Greatest of All Time Review: Thalapathy Vijay starrer film is a cliched thriller but worth a watch

The Greatest of All Time (G.O.A.T.)

Producers- Kalpathi S. Aghoram, Kalpathi S. Ganesh, and Kalpathi S. Suresh

Director- Venkat Prabhu

Cast- Vijay, Prabhudeva, Prashant, Mohan, Sneha, Jairam, Trisha, Ajmal Ameer and Yogi Babu

Platform of Release- Theatres

Rating:

By Jyothi Venkatesh

Gandhi (Vijay), a highly-skilled agent of the Special Anti-Terrorist Squad (SATS), is a typical husband, who hides his occupation from his wife (Sneha). The couple, parents to a boy (Jeevan), are expecting their second child. Gandhi’s SATS team consists of Sunil Thiagarajan (Prashanth), Kalyan Sundaram (Prabhudeva), Ajay (Ajmal Ameer) and their boss Nazeer (Jayaram). On a work trip to Thailand, the sudden kidnapping of his five-year-old son changes his life and his approach to work.

Seventeen years later, we see Gandhi as an immigration officer, who spends his days stamping passports, and taking care of his daughter who lives with his wife. On a work trip to Russia, Gandhi accidentally meets his long-long son Jeevan, a young Vijay and then begins a cat-and-mouse game. With GOAT, senior Vijay is not just a Venkat Prabhu hero, but the junior Vijay is also a Venkat Prabhu villain.

The face-off scenes between young and old Vijay are engaging. With a conventional story, which fails to trigger anything new, director Venkat Prabhu capitalises heavily on Vijay’s trademark charm and with de-aging technology, Vijay gets to do it twice as well and pulls off both the roles with honest ease.

As far as performances go, Mohan as Rajiv Menon, a former SATS officer gone rogue, has done a great job as a bad boy, but sad to say, between the two Vijays – Senior Thalapathy and Ilaya Thalapathy – his character gets lost. De-aging technology has been crafted extremely well, and Prashant, Prabhudeva, Sneha, Jayram, Meenakshi Chowdary etc add to Vijay’s charm. For M.S. Dhoni’s fans, Dhoni also puts in a special flesh and blood appearance at his Chennai IPL stint.

Sneha leaves an impact even though she has few fleeting scenes while Yogi Babu is adequate as a comic filler. Yuvan Shankar Raja scores well in action and elevation sequences, but songs, including the special number with Trisha, just make you yawn.

I should say that though with a conventional story, director Venkat Prabhu capitalizes heavily on Vijay’s trademark charm, and Despite the lag in the middle, the final moments of “GOAT” or “Greatest of All Time” manages to redeem the film to some extent. The last 20 minutes, in particular, bring back the energy and drama, leaving audiences with a satisfying conclusion.

All said and done, the thriller easily beats the first day collections of films like Indian 2 and Dhanush’s Raayan by grossing around 43 crores in just one day, and in Vijay’s 32-year-odd career and 68 films, GOAT is just about good, but definitely not The Greatest of All Times!