G.O.A.T – My Flash Review!

G.O.A.T dropped on Netflix sometime this week and since I had not watched it on the big screen, I caught up with it over the weekend. This is what I felt at the outset. Director Venkat Prabhu narrates the overall outline of the story and gets a nod from Vijay to go ahead. The next thing he does is to make a list of fan groups apart from Vijay’s to appease to foolproof the film’s performance at the box office. From the late Vijayakanth to Ilaiyaraaja to Ajith to Siva Karthikeyan to Trisha to even Dhoni and ‘Whistle Podu”, VP as the director is popularly known, brings in references of them all in to bolster a full-on masala film which is otherwise weak in terms of fundamentals. However, from the end result point of view, he does manage to succeed in a way to give a film that is engaging in parts. Only. It is quite possible that the film got lost in translation when it moved from the big screen to OTT as it happens often.

This is another film in the genre of espionage thrillers that has been flooding Indian cinema these days. Vijay is part of a crack team that does overt and covert operations seemingly across the globe to eliminate threats to the country. While doing so, one of his family members – actually his son, gets entangled in the web of revenge, deceit and of course attack on the country. The story then untangles the various knots with twists and turns which we are rather very familiar with.
The screenplay writers fully depend on the double horsepower engine power of Vijay to bail the entire film out. In order not to make this obvious, they try to be clever by half in bringing those tongue-in-cheek references from old films, resurrecting some old stars who had disappeared into oblivion like Prashanth, Mohan, Prabhu Deva, and Laila and the cheeky lines like mixing up “Champagne” and “Campaign”! While these stars do an okay job, they pale in shadow in front of Vijay’s energy and histrionics. Mohan as a villain doesn’t work at all and he must thank his stars and dubbing artist those days – Surendar for elevating his otherwise ordinary acting skills. While Prashanth pulls it off, the same cannot be said of Prabhu Deva who even at his peak was more of a dancer rather than an actor of any competence in front of the camera.
In the time-tested Indian film formula of father and son double act. VP brings in the novelty of using de-ageing as a technique for portraying the age difference. The novelty by and large works but I am not sure if the film’s fortune would have been any different had VP used another young actor as Vijay’s son. For over three hours, the film is too long and some of the song/dance sequences seem to be just thrust upon us randomly. For a thriller, the background score of Yuvan Shankar Raja is a huge letdown that adds to the drag of the film. The climax happens in the backdrop of an IPL match between arch-rivals Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians – again a smart plug that distracts us from the weakness of the script.
In the post-Kabali era, the commentary on Rajinikanth’s films was usually about how he played his role with energy and heft but was badly let down by the story and the screenplay. Also, how his film is better than the earlier film and so on. In the last few years, I see Vijay’s films also going in that pattern. With G.O.A.T, there has been a huge celebration about the film because it is certainly better than the past few films of Vijay like Leo, Varisu, Beast, Master etc… But does it do justice to Vijay’s stardom or his talent is a big question mark? We are Waiting!
The film must have set the box office on fire but when the hype and dust settle down, the realisation would dawn that G.O.A.T was just an average commercial film in which the director did a smart job of building it up with all those distractions and references. The film or Vijay’s portrayal no way comes close to the title of the film.