GOAT Review : 3 Hours Into Vijay's Overacting & Cringe Action Drama

GOAT Review: Venkat Prabhu's latest film, The Greatest of All Time, aka GOAT, stars Thalapathy Vijay in a double role. Vijay may be your reason to watch the film, but after watching the film, you'll realize that he was the one for whom you shouldn't have watched the film. Vijay has been a mass hero for a long time, and it's difficult for directors and writers to imagine him in some different or offbeat roles. That's what makes GOAT a very dated and boring film. The film was still very decent in the first half, but the second half was terribly bad. Vijay's overacting, cringe-worthy dialogues and over-the-top action scenes spoil this decent-looking film, which could have easily become a one-time watch.

MS Gandhi (Vijay) is an ATS officer on a mission with his team in the opening scene. In the next 5 minutes, they believe that the villain is dead, while everyone sitting in the audience knew that the villain can't be dead so early and will return in the second half. See, that's how outdated GOAT is right from the beginning. Gandhi is then sent to Moscow, where his family is attacked and his son is killed by his enemies. Gandhi retires from field duty, and then years later he finds his son back, Jeeva (Vijay). After Jeeva's return to the family, things start getting worse for Gandhi and his team members. His close friends are getting killed, and Gandhi wonders how it all began right after his son's return. Who is behind all this?

GOAT has those twists—if you can call them twists in today's time. May God help you see them as twists; otherwise, you'll be bored to death. The dual role—a rat in your own house, brainwash, revenge, sacrifice, country, and cricket—it all gets too messy, but that's not the main issue with the movie. The major issue is the horrible execution of these events. The action scenes are too cringeworthy, and the dialogues are cheap. The VFX is poor, and the music doesn't have a single chartbuster. Why were all those songs there after all? Especially when you know your film runs for 3 hours and you have a very predictable plot in your hands. God knows how things were finalized, but extensively, it doesn't seem like concrete work at all.

Thalapathy Vijay's screen presence will take his fans on a joyride. He has enough massy moments and dialogues that will take theaters by storm with hootings and whistles. But tell me, haven't we seen that before? The second role, the younger one, was so bad and full of dirt. The way he delivered his dialogues sounded like a b-grade film from a low-grade cinema industry (or is it just the Hindi dubbing). Prabhu Deva hits the action role and gets it right at the most of the occasions, but you have that spoiling element coming towards the end, which literally kills his character. Sneha and Meenakshi Chaudhary are showpieces; Laila hardly has anything to do. Jayaram and Mohan both disappoint, while Prashanth and Ajmal Ameer are strictly okay. There is a huge supporting cast, and it doesn't really add up to anything noticeable.

One can easily notice that GOAT is poorly edited film with the kind of cutting you see on the big screen. The writing meant mass elevation of Thalapathy and Thala (MS Dhoni), which looked interesting in the beginning but got weaker and weaker with every single minute of the commentary. Riding and even flying bikes on the top of the stadium, and no one is even watching? Are you serious, bro? Writers were on hangovers or what? GOAT has many scenes that look illogical like this, and for what? The mass cinema. It's okay. You can do that because you have been doing that for years. Maybe on some odd day in the future, people will understand, but then there is also a thing called crazy fan following. Vijay's presence will save GOAT from that, because there is nothing else in the film that can save it from tanking in the long run.