At 74 years previous, Tamil legend Rajinikanth stays effortlessly suave, making him worthy of not one, however two of his personal logos previous to “Coolie,” his one hundred and seventieth movie. Director Lokesh Kanagaraj’s newest is a cheer-out-loud crime saga by which hyper-violence has the gracefulness of dance. It has a lead character so magnetic that even its story’s messiest, most convoluted elements stay mounted round his orbit, as he goes supernova as soon as extra.
Kanagaraj’s dirty, lurid method could look like a wierd bedfellow for mass-appeal hero worship. But when his movies have proved something, it’s that he’s extremely adept at placing stability, grounding the star energy of fashionable lead figures like Kamal Haasan, whereas filtering character actors like Vijay Sethupathi by way of an operatic lens, compromising on the strengths of neither class. In “Coolie,” Rajinikanth receives the previous remedy as Deva, an altruistic labor chief who runs a hostel for interloping youth, whereas Soubin Shahir (the lead of Malayalam-language survival drama “Manjummel Boys”) is reworked into the sinister Dayal, a dock supervisor working for a mysterious crime syndicate.
When an estranged pal of Deva’s turns up useless — the kindly inventor Rajasekar (Sathyaraj), seen principally in flashbacks — he seeks to unravel the homicide whereas teaming up with Rajasekar’s untrusting grownup daughter Preethi (Shruti Haasan), a lady making an attempt to make ends meet for her youthful sisters. The duo’s sleuthing leads them to Dayal’s outfit, the place he and his wealthy, megalomaniacal, machete-wielding boss Simon (Nagarjuna) are attempting to purge their gang of moles by any means mandatory — even when it means killing random dock employees as warnings to potential informants. It quickly turns into clear that, in making an attempt to infiltrate Simon’s dock to seek out his pal’s killer, Deva has bitten off way over he can chew. Quickly, battles of each the moral and fisticuff selection come charging his approach.
The preliminary plot revolves round a secret invention, by which the gang cremates our bodies inside seconds by way of an electrical chair-like contraption, perverting the non secular traditions glimpsed at Rajasekar’s Hindu funeral. Symbols of spiritual corruption abound at each flip — at one level, Simon crucifies certainly one of his employees to a chair — a religious darkness that extends to Deva breaking three many years of sobriety to faucet into his most violent instincts. The film’s first half units up every theme and subplot with laser precision, complemented by Philomin Raj’s clockwork enhancing, and an enrapturing digital rating by Anirudh Ravichander, certainly one of India’s cinema’s rising musical stars.
After its intermission, nevertheless, “Coolie” will get a bit sloppy, between head-spinning twists that pile up too quick to course of, and a few uncomfortable optics round how often Preethi’s half is diminished to a crying damsel in misery (she’s kidnapped about half a dozen totally different occasions). However with Kanagaraj on the helm, and Rajinikanth enveloping his body as a benevolent paternal determine, “Coolie” speeds previous these mounting shortcomings with panache.
Kanagaraj and cinematographer Girish Gangadharan transfer by way of house with fluid depth, whereas the movie’s septuagenarian lead warps house and time round his film star stature. Rajinikanth is virtually in a footrace with the film itself: the extra difficult its story will get, with unusually elaborate plot units revealing household secrets and techniques by way of coded telephone calls, the extra he employs his signature, snapping gazes and wry smiles — to not point out, his skill to make convincing even essentially the most ludicrous feats of energy.
The movie additionally options flashbacks to 3 many years prior, which de-age Rajinikanth to the height of his motion profession, however disguise the seams of this imperfect digital course of by including the failings and texture of pale movie grain. “Coolie” — whose title means “laborer” — takes some time earlier than laying its thematic playing cards on the desk, however its story ultimately builds to a rousing saga of union solidarity within the face of rich predators, who get wealthy off employees earlier than discarding their our bodies.
Kanagaraj’s ordinary mode of filmmaking, by which story beats dovetail effortlessly between toe-tapping musical numbers (and are typically woven in-between them) works particularly nicely for a movie with a plot that may be headache-inducing. Typically all you want for a mid-movie reset is a well-recognized cameo. Or a dance to a membership banger sampling dialogue from “Breaking Dangerous.” Or a musical quantity backed by a sprawling sea of extras, transferring simply out of sync so that they resemble sound waves as they provide a sensuous tribute to Monica Bellucci.
“Coolie” is, on its face, a ridiculous, usually impenetrable story. Nevertheless, its aesthetic triumphs outweigh its imperfections, because of a number of the most dazzling and thematically turbo-charged on-screen bloodshed you’re prone to see this yr.
