GOAT, Vijay's Failed Political Launch Vehicle

Vijay has a lot of young and middle-aged women fans, but as voters, they are possibly now with the DMK, or remain with the AIADMK.

Recapturing this constituency would have helped Vijay's political launch and the GOAT script and dialogues could have gone a long way in helping out.

But the kind of script and screenplay and the unusually and equally unnecessary long run-time (3 hours, 3 minutes) that GOAT offers takes the film experience over the heads of those that are not familiar with secret agents and uranium theft in Tamil cinema, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.

At the end of the day, the much much-hyped Tamil film GOAT is not what eternal commercial superhits are made of. Example: Rajini's Baashha (1995).

It is one more superstar movie, this one by, for and of Vijay, where it is the turn of one more of end-of-the-seat film-makers in Venkat Prabhu to surrender his originality to perceived fan-moment and the accompanying pieces of silver, which again he need not have.

Unlike younger film-makers who had earlier compromised their specialised skills in story-telling on the silver screen to the commercial demands of Rajini's super-star fan-image, Venkat was expected to continue with his Mankatha (2012)/Maanaadu (2021) streak of screenplay and treatment in GOAT (The Greatest of All Time).

He did not even attempt to elevate himself and the film, or even retain the old charm.

The film has thus let down his own limited circle of admirers as much as that huge fan-following of Vijay, who had expected at least political one-liners of the earlier kind ahead of the official launch of his political party -- but it's not to be.

From a purely film-making stand-point, Venkat Prabhu has not dished out anything original.

His idea of a 'rogue agent' becoming the film's villain is borrowed from his days as a possible fan of the James Bond franchise (GoldenEye, 1995).

Even the train-blast opening in GOAT is a 'lift' (?) from GoldenEye, the first of the non-Ian Fleming Bond franchise.

Otherwise, if scenes in the Tamil film remind the viewers of yet another Hollywood franchise Mission Impossible, their numbers too may not be many.

Yet, as the wag pointed out in the social media on day one of GOAT's release, the very storyline is a 21st century big-budget, tech-dependent version of Vijay's film-maker father S A Chandrasekhar's Rajadurai (1993).

Like Vijay in GOAT, the late actor-politician Vijayakanth dons the father-son, good-bad combo in the other film.

Only that most of Vijay's fans and contemporaries in trade might not have known or remembered it all.

But they too would acknowledge that other Vijay films before GOAT had better action (Thuppakki) and dance sequences -- the latter one especially with Trisha reminds one of their earlier pairing hit movies like Ghilli (2004) and Thirupaachchi (2005).

Likewise, the chase scenes for a multi-nation location film was/is better in Vishal's Action (2019).

Likewise, even the idea of the bad man kidnapping or otherwise taking away the good man's son (why not daughter?) at a young age and hone him to avenge his own previous shortcomings is there not only in Rajadurai.

That was the stuff most crime-and-punishment films of the 1970s and 1980s were made of -- in every Indian language.

As for the antagonist, those that remember 'Mic' Mohan as the no-nonsense romantic hero in possibly the highest number of movies of the 1980s and the 1990s in all Indian languages -- Tamil, native Kannada and Telugu, in his case -- will ask why, hide his lil' cute face in a large and unkempt beard when his romantic eyes cannot emote villainy even years after his unofficial retirement.

Going beyond the basic content, GOAT does not try to convince the viewer why the antagonist spy became an anti-national and why a team-member in Prabhu Deva fell for big money, spoken about only in a one-line dialogue.

But the film has an AI-created Vijaykanth, rather father Vijay wearing the other's mask, while encountering the villain on the burning train.

If Vijay pulling out the Vijayakanth mask was also a political arrival statement, targeting the latter's DMDK cadres, the party leader and the late actor's wife Premalatha may not like the idea as much as she may have approved of the AI creation.

It is another matter that S A Chandrasekhar, who became known across the country as the maker of the Tamil original (Sattam Oru Iruttarai, 1981) of the 1983 Hindi hit Andhaa Kaanoon (Amitabh Bachchan, Hema Malini, Rajinikanth) would have known that GOAT is a straight lift from Rajadurai and told them so, if only the GOAT team had taken him into confidence early on.

That the father-son duo is just beginning to patch up after years of increasing estrangement, at least in the public eye, as Vijay plunges into full-time politics, may have been the reason for the originality-deficiency in GOAT -- or, was it?

Vijay has to be congratulated for making bold to enter politics after completing all his film commitments without using the latter as a vehicle for the former.

GOAT is the penultimate picture, the 68th in a series that spanned four decades.

Siruthai Siva, the film-maker who will be singing Vijay's swan-song for him next year, is on record that it will also be a purely commercial venture (like GOAT) with no political elements.

But if the makers of Vijay's last outing (?) hope for GOAT's commercial hype to help them market the film better, it is not to be.

They may have to revisit the script to give it a political heft much more and more direct than those like Sarkar (2018).

That way, GOAT can end up as yet another average seller, yet not to be clubbed with Shankar-Kamal Haasan duo's super-duper flop, Indian-2 (2024).

Unless the makers and marketing team of the untitled film are able to extricate the star-connection to GOAT in time for its release, months before the Tamil Nadu assembly polls of 2026, it can hurt Vijay's political outing, too, in some way, big or small.

Intelligent and bold as it may seem, Vijay then would have failed to capitalise on his face-recognition from filmi presence first and dominance since, in ideology-marketing of the MGR kind, which is the benchmark and yardstick in the matter.

With the longest innings for a film actor as a wannabe politician, Rajinikanth too tried out that trick for two long decades but could not muster courage in good time to take the political plunge.

In his time, he could have made the difference, with his do-gooder screen image that connected with all-age groups and both genders among the audience, like with MGR before him.

By the time he made up his mind, he was past his prime in every which way.

Rajinikanth was intelligent enough then to pull out at the right moment, citing health reasons in the midst of Covid withdrawal.

It was not so for Kamal Hassan, whose political entity Makkal Needhi Maiyyam (MNM) is meandering still.

Having lost the non-hype attending on the MNM's launch, he did not hesitate to align with the ruling DMK-Congress combine in the Lok Sabha election this year.

According to reports, DMK Chief Minister M K Stalin has promised a Rajya Sabha seat for Kamal Haasan, when one falls vacant next year, for the MNM's 3.5-per cent voter support (if it still stayed with him).

Before Kamal, it was Vijayakanth with his DMDK, after he had done a lot of good-cop kind of films to build up a political career out of a filmi image that his fans loved.

His DMDK became a moderately successful electoral entity (2006/2009) but did not have enough staying power to take on the entrenched Dravidian super-stars in the DMK and AIADMK, not necessarily in that order, in his time.

He aligned with the AIADMK in 2011 assembly polls under J Jayalalithaa.

He won more seats than earlier, but that was the beginning of the end for his political party and his own political career, so to say.

Today, Vijay, with a near guaranteed 10 per cent initial vote-share, has a compatriot/competitor in another actor-politician Seeman, whose NTK has sort of stabilised its vote-share at around eight per cent.

Possibly anticipating a loss of his youthful voters to Vijay and his Tamizhaga Vetri Kazhagam (TVK), Seeman has been talking hide-and-seek on a possible poll alliance with the latter.

Vijay, if at all, will hint at such possibilities only at the party's massive launch rally later this month.

The same applies to the poll-weakened and at times poll-weary AIADMK and the BJP, which went downhill this time more than when they were allies in elections 2024.

After a point, it may not be impossible for the BJP national leadership to talk down the state unit and become a junior ally of he TVK, if Vijay's district/regional rallies that are to follow pick up electoral momentum, this year and the next.

The same cannot apply to the AIADMK, whose leader and former chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami cannot picture himself as a junior partner to Vijay in any near-future set-up.

For Vijay, he cannot play junior partner, or even an equal, to any other in his maiden elections -- though alliance is what is there at the end of the tunnel for all contemporary actor-politicians, who want to wear the MGR mantle.

There is a difference.

MGR grew with the DMK and walked out at the right time to float the breakaway AIADMK, when the Tamil voters wanted 'change', after the abysmal performance of the entrenched Congress from the past and the ways of the parent DMK under then chief minister M Karunanidhi in the 1970s.

The question is if the Tamil voters really want 'change' from the DMK-AIADMK alternate now, as the BJP-RSS nexus have been believing, especially after the death of Jayalalithaa (2016) and Karunanidhi (2018).

The voter verdict thus far is negative. For Vijay to win, he has to try and convince the voters that they can do with 'change' and that he is that 'agent of change'.

Fortunately for him, the existing threesome, namely, the ruling DMK, AIADMK and the BJP, are throwing mud at one another, but not all of it has stuck.

Unfortunately for him, the voters too do not know if they want 'change', what 'change' it could be and who that 'change-agent', if at all, could be.

Rather, they have come to believe in the post-Jaya, post-Karuna 'new normal', where Tamil Nadu politics is now centred on the experienced Stalin, like with his father in his time.

It is one thing for Vijay or any other in his place, old and new competitors, to believe that 'anti-incumbency' has stuck with the DMK and Stalin since the victorious elections 2021, but a lot would depend also on how much of the blame, the BJP-ruled Centre and Prime Minister Narendra Modi are willing to continue sharing, as has happened since 2014.

By not having experienced politicians of whatever hues by his side, Vijay may face the same problem as Vijayakanth and Seeman.

Despite being an experienced and charismatic politician in his own right, MGR wooed very many DMK leaders to his side -- both to weaken the parent party and to have long list of advisors and second-line leaders and commanders.

MGR's cadre fans from their shared days in the DMK helped. They too grew with the party. The present-day AIADMK presidium chairman, octogenarian Tamizhmahan Hussain, belonged there -- and is among the senior-most leaders of the party, whatever his electoral worth.

For Vijay, the absence of a second line showed first when he launched the party flag and song recently, for being popularised in the launch rally.

The song sounds more like a track from A R Rahman's in Mani Rathnam's Ponniyin Selvan franchise.

Anti-BJP sections of the social media panned the flag's red-yellow-red colouring as a Hindutva identity that Vijay should have avoided, but did not.

The state BSP, a national party until now, has complained that the elephant(s) in the flag is reminiscent of their poll symbol, frozen by the Election Commission.

Tamizhar Vazhvurimai Katchi leader Velmurugan, an MLA in the DMK combine, has protested the similar abbreviation of Vijay's party as misleading and confusing the voters.

There are others who point out how the two elephants facing each other and standing on hind legs with raised trunks is a 'lift' from the Kerala government's logo.

According to some, an experienced politician in his inner circle would have immediately pointed out these avoidable errors -- but not the present one.

It is against backgrounds such as this, Vijay fans (not all of them, his political followers) a film like GOAT was expected to project his leadership qualities in real life through his reel-life packaging -- which it did not even attempt, and so very deliberately.

It is acknowledged that Vijay has a lot of young and middle-aged women fans, but as voters, they are possibly now with the DMK, or remain with the AIADMK as used to under MGR and Jayalalithaa, especially over their competitive welfare schemes for women's growth and welfare, and those of their children, both female and male.

Recapturing this constituency would have helped Vijay's political launch and the GOAT script and dialogues could have gone a long way in helping out.

But the kind of script and screenplay and the unusually and equally unnecessary long run-time (3 hours, 3 minutes) that GOAT offers takes the film experience over the heads of those that are not familiar with secret agents and uranium theft in Tamil cinema, despite Kamal's Vikram (2022) and such other films educating them -- but only as mass-entertainers.

The fact is that the title, Greatest of All Time, does not do justice either to the actor, or his character, or to the film as a whole.

Nor does it apply to the ensemble cast, who get adequate screen time, that too with our hero, unlike in other multi-starrer of the kind, at least in Tamil.

That, for Vijay fans, also takes the 'action, drama, sentiment', et al, away from Vijay, and distributes it among many yesteryear actors, with whom they cannot make the 'connect'.

If there is still a contemporary connection, it is, yes, to cricketer M S Dhoni, whom, a television commentator's line towards the end proclaims as the 'greatest of all time'.

That way, the entire climax scene, set in Chennai's M A Chidambaram stadium, in an IPL tourney between CSK and MI, is too contrived, only for the film-maker to include the title, as if it were an after-thought.

For neither does Vijay's character graph in the movie, nor his performance entails that title -- not certainly in, from and through GOAT.

N Sathiya Moorthy, veteran journalist and author, is a Chennai-based policy analyst and political commentator.

Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com