'Coolie' review: Not enough Lokesh Kanagaraj in Rajinikanth's latest

Mint

a day ago

There are four key pieces of information on the Coolie poster. Above the title: 'Superstar Rajinikanth'. And below: 'Written & directed by Lokesh Kanagaraj', 'An Anirudh musical', 'An Anbariv action'. In the end, the film ends up less than the sum of these imposing parts. It isn't sterile, it has something of all their personalities, but no one brings their A-game.
The film starts with its best idea: Soubin Shahir as the heavy. He plays Dayal, an enforcer at a Visakhapatnam dockyard, responsible for keeping workers afraid and details of his employer's smuggling racket from leaking out. It's inspired casting, transforming the mild-looking Malayalam actor into a loathsome sadist. Shahir jumps in headfirst, radiating mean little guy malevolence as he hacks, bludgeons and gurgles psychotically.
Rajinikanth's Deva tumbles sideways into the film. After an old friend, Rajasekhar (Sathyaraj), dies of a heart attack, he turns up to pay his respects. Another friend of the deceased tells him Rajasekhar had invented a 'mobile cremator' that could turn a body to dust in seconds. This brought him to the attention of Simon, head of the smuggling syndicate, who began using his services to dispose of corpses that would pile up due to his and Dayal's hair-trigger tempers. Deva, whose past is revealed later but is clearly a 'man of respect', starts to dig into what he suspects is his friend's murder.
That portable electric chair has the Lokesh stamp—pulpy, off-kilter, darkly funny (the manner of its relaying, a flashback with Deva as onlooker, is a trick he used in Vikram to greater effect). Yet, apart from this and a couple of other moments—a miraculous escape from death ('Lazarus syndrome', it seems), an artful flashback styled like a Rajini film from the '80s—the pre-interval stretch felt less Kanagaraj in spirit than anything I've of his seen. Maybe the director tamped down on his outré instincts in deference to his star, but it didn't feel like a full-blown Rajinikanth film either. Unlike the headlong rush of Kaithi and Vikram, this felt quite linear, alternating between Simon and Dayal's excesses and Deva as an avenging force about to explode.
The film gets messier and less careful as it goes on, and thus closer to the Kanagaraj style. His brand of fetishistic details start to pile up—a gangster's safe accessed through a cubicle in a public toilet, Dayal's wrist handcuffed to a chain around his neck. There's a revelation that's almost as good as Agent Tina in Vikram. Kannada star Upendra shows up and breaks stuff. Aamir Khan clowns around amiably at the end; the crowd I saw it with got a kick out of him speaking Tamil. It would've gone a long way if Simon was more interesting, but Nagarjuna's final boss is an unworthy adversary (Dayal's fate is also disappointing, given how much of a headache he proves through the film).
Like a lot of popular Tamil cinema today, Kanagaraj tells stories of great men, terrible men, and all the men in between. Women must make do, as Shruti Haasan does here playing Rajasekhar's daughter Preethi. There's a scene shortly after her father's funeral when she tells Deva she isn't interested in what happened to him and just wants to be left alone with her two sisters to live a quiet life. Rajinikanth laughs, says 'Super' sarcastically, and restates his desire for revenge. And, of course, that's what happens, with Preethi having to be rescued multiple times. It's almost a parody of Tamil action film gender dynamics—woman makes reasonable point, man dismisses her concerns and makes it about himself.
Stunt coordinators Anbumani and Arivumani, who go by Anbariv, are as skillful as anyone in Indian cinema in creating action for ageing stars (they worked brilliantly around Kamal Haasan's limitations in Vikram). But Coolie is surprisingly short of good action ideas. Anbariv and Kanagaraj had earlier worked on Kaithi, Vikram and Leo, each with elaborate, startling set pieces. Coolie feels like the trio on autopilot, especially disappointing since cinematographer Girish Gangadharan (Jallikkattu) is more than capable of rolling with complex choreography.
In his 171st film as lead actor, Rajini is solid rather than electrifying. It's telling that the loudest cheers in my screening came for his de-aged self in the flashbacks; this is always the Rajinikanth that's expected. Coolie isn't Kanagaraj at his fearless best. But after the antiseptic War 2, it's a relief to see something that, even at its most frustrating, could never be mistaken for a film by committee.