Coolie enters Lokesh Cinematic Universe: The genre cinema of Lokesh Kanagaraj

Indian Express

3 days ago

A young bank employee hailing from Coimbatore used to jot down story ideas on his train journeys back and forth from work in the city, while listening to his favorite movie soundtracks. A stranger to the film industry, the only constant in his life was his undying devotion to superstar Kamal Haasan, and his film Sathya (1988), a film that altered his life choices and personality traits at an impressionable age. He made up bonkers scenarios in his head starring his idol Kamal Haasan and smaller films he could make with his friends during his time off from work. He kept chipping away at his mundane job, even as he consumed from a smorgasbord of late 80s and 90s action fare, which were telecast on HBO. The humble fanboy in question is none other than Lokesh Kanagaraj is the humble fanboy in question whose rough-on-the-edges, macho action vehicles have been enthralling a whole new generation of filmgoers with their visceral thrills and impeccably written action blocks.
Another of his trademark films, now grouped under Lokesh Cinematic Universe, is ready to land — Coolie, starring Rajnikanth in the lead role alongside an ensemble supporting cast featuring Nagarjuna, Aamir Khan, Upendra, Shruthi Haasan, Soubin Shahir, and Sathyaraj. The trailer and marketing material put out by the team include all the 'essential signifiers' of what makes his work tick among younger filmgoers. There is the obvious bloodshed, the zany English verses accompanying the pop-sounding EDM score by his regular collaborator Anirudh Ravichandar, gore and gratuitous violence, and a sweaty, rough-on-the-edges genre sensibility in terms of his action set pieces and the sprawling scope of his peculiar brand of high-octane cinema, high on testosterone
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The director with only six films under his belt has already developed a keenly personal style of action that owes its debt to the macho cinema of 80's Hollywood, where the economic writing, studio mandates, and more than capable genre filmmaking combined to produce some of the finest action films ever made. Lokesh follows strictly in that tradition. In an interview with Baradwaj Rangan recently, the director admitted, 'I want all my heroes to be lone wolves like Clint Eastwood characters from his films. They exist on their terms and don't heed whatever societal trends or codes are in vogue at the time. They simply exist as they are without repentance.' This gives us an idea of the kind of storytelling tradition the 39-year-old falls under and aspires to in his male-centered puzzle boxes.
Few filmmakers get 'cinematic universes' attributed to them, and Lokesh is the one who spearheaded the idea of the adoption of the multiverse model in our films. 'LCU' is known for its shared cinematic worlds, recurring characters, and side players that run across his filmography. This is not an overnight career move, but from Kaithi, his sophomore outing, you can sense the impulses of an ambitious action cinema aficionado trying to replicate the screenwriting rhythms and visual texture of better Hollywood films from the past. Drawing from a well of inspirations ranging from films starring Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, to major grimy B Action movie titles of the 90's, opened up his purview of a cinematic language where the side characters and arc get equal care to that of the hero. The well of inspirations goes back to the starter pack of action films like Rambo: First Blood, Die Hard, and a healthy dose of Tarantino riffs and Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy, as a sort of his landmark obsessions.
Lokesh is your average urban action cinema lover filled with a handful of Hollywood references, who has been given studio budgets and action stars to play around his little genre mashup sandboxes. These are not mere reference points for Lokesh but artistic north stars towards which he has been building his action figures. The director, through his stories of reluctant heroes forced to pick up the gauntlet against approaching evil, has made a thematically consistent and visually visceral filmmaking philosophy that values gratification over substance. There is sometimes too much going on in films, and side players from one film may pop up impromptu in other films, merging all the individual films into a sort of cinematic petri dish of interlinked stories, all taking place within a supposed shared universe.
This shared universe character swapping is not done with the incessant glee of 'Marvel Cinematic Universe's' callbacks or cameos, but with much better restraint in his films. The director never indulges in overt tributes or self-congratulatory callbacks. He is too smart and knows that repetition and monotony can hamper the latitude he has been given for his stacked action potboilers. 'Dilli', an ex-convict recently released from Prison, is eager to go back to his estranged daughter but is forced to help the cops in a daredevil mission, with only a friendly cop on his side. This logline from his Karthi starrer 'Kaithi' might seem all too familiar for the fans of Jerry Bruckheimer-produced Nick Cage B-movie classic 'Con Air (1997), and it is. Lokesh works within a similar genre playing ground but strips back much of the excess and campiness inherent in Con Air in his loose adaptation, to make it an emotionally resonant little action adventure that is grounded enough to make the local hybrid flavour work.
Lokesh is known to take familiar stereotypes of the unshaken, emotionally distant at first (only to be revealed otherwise) men with murky pasts who are called upon to salvage a current crisis in the most unexpected of ways. Lokesh Kanagaraj is one of the most prominent pop culture figures in South Indian action cinema, and the young filmmaker, who specializes in blood-soaked, edgy action tent poles, has created a fan following for sculpted hero figures and the unbridled dynamic staging of set pieces. There is a clear attention to the camera moves, blocking of actors in frame, and you can see a tendency to locate the volatile rage of men caught in worlds of crime. The incessant 'say no to drugs' messaging in his films feels more like a mere footnote to greater genre pleasures on display.
The women are not the centre of attention of Lokesh films, and he dutifully plays with their placement in his 'action-break-action' structure as secondary players moving the protagonist's journey forward. This is the world of men clawing, kicking, and storming their way out of trouble. Lokesh's scenes don't so much end, but bleed into one another, and you can see the kinetic splicing together of temporality, an offshoot of his well-established love for filmmakers like Christopher Nolan and Tarantino, his spiritual forefathers of sorts in genre image making. The unpredictable beats of his non-linear screenplay work best when the character arcs and exposition merge as opposed to flow linearly, as in films like Master and Leo, where the conventional structures take away the charm of his peculiar world-building.
There is not even an iota of flab in Lokesh's films, which center the action and use setups to build on the momentum of the writing, which winds up suspense, dropping one revelation at a time. Kanagaraj is an aspirational figure for your filmmakers trying to make action cinema rooted in our tradition. But sometimes his over-reliance on drug use and overt immersion in the world of crime has been criticized for fetishizing that life. The director does no service to himself by being an originator of pulpy, invigorating genre material that amounts to little substance at the end of the day. But the moments of total immersion, quirky scene ideas, and unconventional coverage choices make him an interesting voice in the mainstream, whose slick cinematic imagination makes up for the relentless gore and opacity in his films.
When he took on the job of adapting David Cronenberg's late career existential action drama 'History of Violence' for his Thalapathy Vijay starrer Leo, Lokesh just took the baseline genre punchline of Cronenberg's introspective tone poem and inserted his stylistic tendencies and overwrought revenge cinema. He scaled it up to make it a full-blown star-led action vehicle about a man hiding behind a secret identity. Lokesh does not let go of the central question of identity, but his fancies lie in the duality of the characters 'Parthiban' and 'Leo' played by Vijay, not for its philosophical enquiry, but for its potential for a solid mind game.
Vikram, being by far his best film to date, was where he first joined hands with his philosophical and cinematic idol Kamal Haasan. You can see the reverence and care with which he splices together Kamal Haasan's arc in the larger crime story beats of Vikram and how playfully he inserts the character Vikram's backstory from the character threads from a long-forgotten Kamal Haasan classic of the same name. The 'interval block' mode of filmmaking was ushered in by Kanagaraj in a new way by his unfuzzy collision of disparate story strands to bring together the heroes and villains of his films face to face, ready for the rolling punches awaited in the latter half. But he started his career with a now underrated, non-linear, small-budget road movie, Maanagaram, that followed multiple character perspectives, a fact that makes perfect sense considering his interest in thwarting timelines and character interactions in his films.
The journey from that independent filmmaker to the now celebrated master of genre brutality has been one for the ages. Coming to Coolie, all the plot details and visuals to have come out in the promotion seem to suggest a film closer to Vikram by way of its character types and narrative styling. There has not been revealed by way of the plot but every update from the team has been getting fans and casual moviegoers excited and you rarely get to see a director commanding this sort of adoration and fan following at a young age, where the film's financial performance and cultural longevity is decided upon by his name on the title. A Tamil homegrown cowboy action cinema lover is rejuvenating action cinema like never before, and we are the better for it. Coolie will hit theatres tomorrow and will be a litmus test for Lokesh's changing cinematic sensibilities and Tamil cinema's box office capabilities.