Coolie: The Lokesh Kanagaraj Formula Is A Massive Disappointment In Rajinikanth-Starrer

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AFTER FIVE FILMS, Lokesh Kanagaraj’s staples are now well known. His films teem with men embodying varying degrees of macho masculinity, vulnerability and identity crisis. Reluctant heroes drawn into battle against their will, their current pedigree not betraying their past or their abilities. The men of Maanagaram were only looking for love or an IT job or both. We don’t know what Dilli (Karthi in Kaithi) was doing before he went to prison. We meet JD (Vijay in Master) as an alcoholic college professor with no motivation to live for himself, much less for others. Vikram (Kamal Haasan in the eponymous film) retired to a life of geriatric parenthood and then he lost his son. Even Vijay’s Leo with his history of violence found a new name, new identity and an entrance into annals of the happy Indian family. And then shit happens. To all of them.

Coolie, Lokesh’s collaboration with Rajinikanth, lays out similar terrain. We meet Rajinikanth’s Deva in Chennai as a mansion owner-warden-cook rolled into one, an ex-labourer lording over his establishment with a strict prohibition order. No alcohol touches his lips and none of it escapes his eyes. But before all this, Lokesh’s signature bounty makes an appearance. The Visakhapatnam harbour is a den of illicit activities under boss Simon (Nagarjuna Akkineni) and enforcer Dayal (Soubin Shahir). They offer a two-crore prize for the head of a police informer among them.

And then there is another plot involving Sathyaraj as Rajasekhar, an engineer with three daughters — one of them Preethi (Shruti Haasan) — who has designed an electric cremation chair that is useful for Simon’s mysterious chief business. It’s all a bit vague and it only gets denser and more incoherent from here. Deva turns out to be Rajasekhar’s best friend and it so happens that he is pulled into this business of moles, shady dealings and a chair. If you are thinking that none of this sounds compelling enough, you will be correct. Even with Lokesh’s usual staples on paper, nothing in Coolie makes sense or is even engaging. And there is too much rug-pulling too often that doesn’t set your heartbeat racing. The film is as generic as the convoluted story is uninteresting.

Suffice to say, Coolie is a massive disappointment. Lokesh has excelled at many things in his eight-year career so far. He always constructed a no-nonsense hero in a no-nonsense, lean genre film. The storyline for his films filled only two sentences but how he arrived at those beats and how he executed them were engaging and innovative. His films rarely had unnecessary bits, they were humourless in the most remarkable ways, and they always stuck to genre conventions. The crime and the police state nexus. The drug war or the unbearable criminality of the city people. They were serious men in serious situations.

Coolie, for the first time, reveals an unserious Lokesh Kanagaraj. There are no real stakes in Coolie, and it is partly a result of stock characters with nary a sense of purpose. This is the filmmaker who gave meaty parts to three stars in Vikram — Kamal Haasan, Fahadh Faasil and Vijay Sethupathi. Here, he amasses Upendra, Nagarjuna and Aamir Khan for a union with Rajinikanth, and reduces them to museum attractions.

Apart from the actors, the film also boasts of names like cinematographer Girish Gangadharan and music director Anirudh along with Lokesh’s trusted editor Philomin Raj and Chandhru, his co-writer reuniting with him after Maanagaram. Like the director, none of the names live up to the standards of their past work and it is astounding that Coolie is such a collective failure. Lokesh’s films always possessed a certain urgency, slender in their design and irresistible in their quest for action. Apart from all that, they always had great action sequences, moments that truly bring the house down even if one watches in the loneliness of a laptop screen.

Coolie misses all those marks, an unfortunate result for a star like Rajinikanth in the 50th year of his career. It is bewildering to question if Lokesh took the audience for granted, approaching a film top down, bringing big names and trying to put them together in the lab to see what he can conjure. It is time to go back to the old school writing that announced his arrival. Tamil cinema needs one of its current finest firing on all cylinders.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of OTTplay. The author is solely responsible for any claims arising out of the content of this column.)