Living up to the aspiration expressed in the film’s title is, by all accounts, a tall order. Superstar Vijay, as is his wont, does not back down from the challenge. He tries his best to embody what his fans believe him to be and manages to land on his feet at the end of the formulaic exercise.
Diving into the project as father and son, Vijay carries The Greatest of All Timeuneven at best, on his shoulders. He navigates the obstacles that are inevitable in a film as over-the-top as this with customary flair, if not consistent success.
Director and co-writer Venkat Prabhu weaves the film around the leitmotif of semi-retirement that Vijay has employed in some of his recent releases (Beast, Lion). The hero emerges from years of living in the shadows and returns to the center of the action.
Amid a series of deadpan references to the star’s own films and random nods to other Tamil films and songs that place him in the broader context of the history of mass cinema, The Greatest of All Time perhaps contains a meta-allusion to the imminent end of Vijay’s acting career, in preparation for a full-time immersion in politics.
The Greatest of All Time seeks to extend Vijay’s unbroken streak of box office hits – a run of nine box office hits has made him the highest-grossing actor in Indian cinema. The film has everything his fans want. What could have been done with a more original script.
The film juggles themes that have been done to death—friendship, loyalty, betrayal, guilt, and redemption—and culminates in a drawn-out climax that pits the actor’s two personas against each other. Beyond the parameters of fictional narrative, one can interpret the confrontation as one between a bygone generation and an era carrying baggage that blurs the line between good and evil, between a sense of duty and the need for self-preservation and revenge.
Vijay plays MS Gandhi – note that the initials are not MK, but MS. The Dhoni parallel comes to the fore in the film’s climax, which is a decisive last over of an Indian Premier League knockout match in a packed Chepauk.
Gandhi – peace is not his main weapon, righteousness is – leads a quartet of secret agents working for the Special Anti-Terrorism Squad (SATS), a RAW unit based in Chennai. He is the MSD of Indian espionage – a great finisher, no matter how badly he starts.
This also applies to the film. The Greatest of All Time starts off with a bang, but loses its way a bit for the rest of the first half as it seeks to strike a balance between the hero’s innate bellicosity and family responsibilities.
As he himself suggests, he has two bosses, one at work, a rock-solid SATS boss, Nazeer (Jayaram), and another at home, his wife Anusuya (Sneha). He gets into trouble far more with the latter than the former.
After a series of crucial revelations and a series of murders committed by a treacherous young man who resurfaces from Gandhi’s past, The Greatest of All Time paves the way for an unoriginal ending that is somewhat salvaged by the talent with which it is edited and filmed. Cinematographer Siddhartha Nuni and editor Venkat Raajen deserve a mention here.
A devastating bomb blast is just a push of a button away. Gandhi, trained to never waver, is determined to demonstrate who the GOAT is. He springs into action as thousands of innocent lives hang in the balance.
The team – Gandhi works alongside Kalyan Sundaram (Prabhu Deva), Sunil Thiagarajan (Prasanth) and Ajay (Ajmal Ameer) – is sent on a sensitive mission to Kenya. They ambush a train carrying military-grade uranium destined for a terrorist group. In the heat of the moment, they end up overstepping their instructions.
The ill-advised overreach – which fails to produce the desired result – comes back to haunt Gandhi, his wife and five-year-old son Jeevan (Akhil) – and his associates at SATS. In the run-up to the break, Gandhi and his boss are drawn into a violent confrontation with a man who hides his face behind a helmet that has “Devil” written across the visor.
The rest of The Greatest of All Time depends on a renegade secret agent (who has great interests at stake and causes endless confusion) and several other traitors and prodigals who push the protagonist and his men to the limit.
The film is a bit exhausting at times because it is so long. However, the action sequences and plot twists are judiciously spaced out over the three-hour runtime, so none of them are unduly out of place. I wish the same could be said about the music (composed by Yuvan Shankar Raja). It not only slows down the film, but also unconsciously stretches it out.
The director, for his part, seems aware of the effect that musical numbers are likely to have on the film’s pacing. In a sequence that follows the cold-blooded murder of a government official, the perpetrator uses his romantic interest (Meenakshi Chaudhary) as a means of getting rid of the pursuer. “Is that what you called me here for,” the lady asks. “No, (I called you here) for a song,” the man replies.
In a thriller like this, action is the main currency. Not every song is music to the ears. Likewise, not every attempt the film makes to inject humor into the proceedings bears fruit.
Yogi Babu is played as a man who is in possession of a stolen cell phone that contains crucial secrets. Going by the hero’s name, Nehru and Bose are evoked by the subplot to reinforce a section of the film that doesn’t make much sense.
Vijay, giving body to two distinct characters, one grizzled and tough, the other immature and obstinate, both carrying scars from past events, makes up for what the film lacks in terms of logic and fluidity.
This is the kind of redemption act he has done so many times this millennium that it has ceased to surprise his critics. His fans, of course, will find no reason to feel cheated by what he has done. The Greatest of All Time in generous proportions.