G.O.A.T

The “Greatest of All time” (GOAT) movie of ‘Thalapathy’ Vijay, hosting a galaxy of stars, was much-awaited as it is his second last movie before he switches on to his political career. The movie directed by Venkat Prabhu is a generic mass masala movie catering to the actor’s fan base and then perhaps a few more. 

Spoilers ahead.

Pros

• Casting for a such a large-canvas movie could be arduous. With Prasanth (reviving his career), Prabhu Deva, Sneha, Laila and with other starry cameos, the movie has placed a safe bet with each actor performing their role precisely.
• The action sequences of the movie are top-notch and keep us entertained for the most part.
• Last, but least, the man himself ‘Thalapathy Vijay’ has given his all in terms of performance and dance capabilities and will be sorely missed when he hangs his acting boots.

Cons

• Venkat Prabhu and Yuvan Shankar Raja have given us multiple songs and BGMs to rave about, but this movie unfortunately drew a blank. The songs and the BGM (literally blaring) was well below par. 
• LOGIC. Logic has no place in Indian’s mass masala movies, but this was taken to the extreme in this movie. An intelligence officer’s son is kidnapped (actually Vijay’s charatcer could have very well taken his son along to fill up the form) and there are no repercussions for it. Strange and hard to believe.
• STORY. Hollywood scripts are to be copied and/or inspired from. But this movie’s inspiration from Gemini Men/Departed/Sniper-Train is taken too far and requires course correction at least in the next part. I believe the director first script for this movie revolved around a time travel wherein Vijay’s character uses time travel to revisit the crime scene again and again to find out what happened to his missing son and eventually retrieve him, but was modified as another father-son time travel movie stole the show recently.
• VFX. Fell short of expectations, could have been better.

 

Coming on the back of a critically and commercially movie like ‘Manadu’, director Venkat Prabhu’s effort seemed not to be that GOAT. Hopefully it will be course corrected in the sequel and hope the entire movie crew put in more effort the next time around to send-off Vijay’s acting career on a happy note.