An official adaptation of the Malayalam film Lucifer, GodFather follows the story of a mysterious man who stakes his claim on the throne following the death of a political leader. The original story by Murali Gopi was layered and cerebral although it still had the commercial entertainer tropes intact. But here the story is simplied and largely catered to the fans of Chiranjeevi, considering the number of tweaks being made for a “wholesome” theatrical experience. The screenplay standing at a shade above 150 minutes did seem like it was a shade too long despite it being well short of the duration of Lucifer which was 172 minutes long. And this was a problem for me in a weird manner!

The drama has very little buildup to it with so many scenes appearing to be rushed in, without a steady buildup that we did see in the original. There was a deliberate attempt to make things massy and over the top without catering to the nuances of the original screenplay that gave it so much more texture. I can understand that this was done to suit the palate of the Telugu speaking audience who do prefer their share of over the top cinema. And there is nothing wrong in it. But you have got to remember that this is a political drama at its core and to truly present the nuances of it, you needed that buildup which was missing here.

The core idea and trajectory of the drama is similar to the original which is the good news. The bad news though is that it lacks conviction and because of that I often found myself distracted. If the idea here was just to entertain then this wasn’t exactly the script to implement it. One thing to note is that you may end up enjoying the drama if you haven’t watched the original film Lucifer or if you are die-hard fans of Chiranjeevi or even Salman Khan. But for folks like me, I was often seen facepalming myself as the proceedings were borderline caricaturish and needless to say over the top.

Now there might be a counter argument that Lucifer had its share of commercial elements too. That is a fair point but the strength of that drama was in its cerebral and layered writing as well as the characterization. Here, the entire character of Tovino Thomas is edited out only to give Nayanthara more meat to her role and better establish her equation with Chiranjeevi. But that was anyway on the cards and I so missed that podium speech by Tovino here that instantly had me sold to the drama. Even the character of Salman Khan was at best atrocious. In the original Prithviraj Sukumaran had a surprise role and was always true to his character performing covert operations. But here I don’t know what the makers intended the character to do. Was he a spy? Why was he shooting rockets from his motorcycle?(yes you read that right). It was a star celebration which was never true to its source material.

The final act is just ridiculously bad here. It almost seemed like a video game with the two protagonists shooting down everyone in a drama that was far too bland and predictable for its genre perhaps even for people who may not have watched the original. In other words, the screenplay is a mess!