The Greatest of All Time

The Greatest of All Time Movie Review Rating:

Star Cast: Thalapathy Vijay, Prabhu Deva, Prashanth, Ajmal Ameer, Jayaram, Mohan, Sneha Prasanna, Meenakshi Chaudhary

Director: Venkat Prabhu

What’s Good: Unabashed catering to mass audiences and fans

What’s Bad: As logic goes down, the length (of the film) goes up!

Loo Break: Almost every song sequence

Watch or Not?: Definitely for fans of Vijay and addicts of mindless masala films

Language: Tamil, Hindi (Thalapathy Is The GOAT)

Available On: Theatrical release

Runtime: 183 Minutes

User Rating:

Uranium is retrieved by four fast friends led by Gandhi (Vijay), who are furtive (as in unknown to their respective families) comrades in SATS (Special Anti-Terrorism Squad), which we are told is a division of RAW. This is done from a speeding train in Kenya in 2008, and one of the culprits involved is a renegade intelligence officer, Rajiv Menon (Mohan), who is killed when the train explodes.

Soon, Gandhi’s wife Anu (Sneha Prasanna), who is pregnant, comes to know that he is a part of such a dangerous force, and to placate her, he takes his five-year-old son, Jivan, and his wife to Thailand and Pattaya when they have to go there on a mission.

But things go wrong there, and even as Anu delivers a daughter, Jivan is kidnapped and later found dead, his body burnt.

Shattered, Gandhi leaves active service and takes a desk job at Chennai airport. He now lives alone, and his wife Anu and daughter Jeevitha (Abhyukta Manikandan) are separated. But when his ex-boss, Naseer (Jayaram), sends him to Moscow to train officers at the Indian Embassy, it comes under attack, and among the miscreants, Gandhi discovers a young lookalike of himself. Soon, it is found that it is Jivan, his son, who is not dead. A joyous Gandhi brings him back even as Jivan warns him that there is a dangerous gang looking to kill Gandhi.

Back in Chennai, the family had a happy reunion. But trouble starts soon, as Naseer summons Gandhi for a secret meeting but is killed by a masked man in front of Gandhi’s eyes. Next up is a colleague who is murdered even as the SATS team is looking for Naseer’s missing mobile phone. Finally, Jivan’s childhood sweetheart, Srinidhi (Meenakshi Chaudhary) is murdered.  And it turns out that Rajiv Menon, who is very much alive, has planned an elaborate revenge on Gandhi and the SATS team.

The Greatest of All Time Movie Review: Script Analysis

In Maharashtra, there is a dish named Ghadaa, which includes any and every possible ingredient, such as vegetables, pulses, and even seafood. The corresponding item in Gujarat is the famous Undhiyo, a similar cocktail of multiple vegetarian ingredients.

I state this because the script of this film is just like these two dishes—it has simply everything in it! And whenever the dots cannot be connected by logic, we get illogic without hesitation.

Family sentiments, laughter, and one-liners, secrets, twists every now and then, exotic foreign locations, lavish song-and-dance numbers, science, technology, expensive VFX, impossible stunts, mammoth action, and, of course, chases (including a scene where a biker chases an underground train!) are dished out consistently and relentlessly after the initial extravaganza in a train that opens the film.

The script is thus completely cooked up and even over-boiled to serve entertainment, entertainment, and entertainment—with each of these three words underlined and in bold fonts and italics! It does not bother that it is stretching to a voluminous length as the idea is also to glorify a 50-year-old star icon, that too with a lot of de-aging used.

The Greatest of All Time Movie Review: Star Performance

Vijay obviously rocks the show—and how! The intensity of his gaze may resemble Anil Kapoor’s a wee bit, and he just plays completely to the gallery in every step (dance), mood, or stunt. There is nothing literally that he cannot do, and come, Gandhi or Jivan; he has the kind of vitality that could be just right for a post-health tonic effect advertisement. He is extraordinary when he breaks down on seeing his son’s charred remains and later when he breaks the news to his wife, who has just delivered a baby girl. But he also does manic acts well whenever Jivan is placed under various extraordinary circumstances.
Prabhu Deva is as effective as his colleague Kalyan, but I preferred Prashanth more as the staid Sunil. Ajmal Ameer, as Ajay, the fourth colleague, has nothing much to do, but Jayaram, as Naseer, is effective. Mohan, as Rajiv Menon, does what is expected of him. As Diamond Raju, Yogi Babu is his usual self.

The women are ornamental at best, disposable at worst, and have really nothing to do. Of course, most of them provide glamour and skin shows.