Coolie

Lokesh Kanagaraj is no longer a “young” filmmaker. He’s been around for eight years and six films, and it’s become easy to predict the exact manner in which he works on his screenplays. Back when he introduced the Gatling gun towards the end of the much-loved Kaithi, we didn’t just get one of Tamil cinema’s most exhilarating climaxes, we also got a textbook example of what one can do with a great Chekhov’s Gun. Five films and an artillery later, you’re able to make out the beats of what he’s trying to achieve, hours before his films get there. So when we saw a happy picture of Parthiban/Leo and family feeding their newly domesticated hyena, you could sense that the wild animal would make a return later on in the film. And by the time we hit Coolie, our minds are working overtime when a pointless character walks past a closed door with another pointless character revealing how lethal the inmate of that room is. It may have been a gun in Kaithi, a canon in Vikram, a box and arrow in Master and the Hyena in Leo, but with Coolie, Lokesh has possibly realised that he’s making a film so big that he can now afford to cast a full-time superstar from another industry as his Chekhov’s Gun.

Coolie has no dearth of big stars. It has Aamir Khan in a special appearance as a swaggering, heavily tattooed crime lord who pops out of a chopper in the middle of a desert at the fag-end of the film. Upendra has an extended cameo that kicks of late in the second half when the chips are down for once for the titular protagonist. Nor is that all. Nagarjuna Akkineni dons the garb of the principal villain and Soubin Shahir slips into the skin of a slimy double-dealer. It’s top-heavy, to say the least. Each one of them carries his weight in Coolie-The Powerhouse (the title of the Hindi dub of the Tamil action extravaganza that’s been released without the suffix). But it is hardly surprising that the onus of doing most of the heavy lifting in squarely upon the redoubtable Rajinikanth.

Hopes were always riding high for Lokesh Kanagaraj’s Rajinikanth-starrer Coolie. The Tamil release is arguably 2025’s biggest blockbuster title from mainstream Indian cinema. Superstar-amplifier Lokesh is one of the hottest Indian directors, a fixture on the wishlist of most leading movie stars. After all, who wouldn’t want to be the center of a moody, bloody, hyper-stylised world—propelled by the dosage, the voltage, the entry sequence, the set pieces, the banging Anirudh soundscape, and beyond? Aside from giving Thalapathy Vijay a number of his biggest hits with Master and Leo, he also reintroduced Kamal Haasan with his crackling 2022 “comeback film” Vikram. Now, with Coolie, he sets his sights on the man whose very name is synonymous with the word ‘superstar—Rajinikanth.

2025 has been an unusual year for spectacle films (barring a few, of course), not just in Kollywood, but across the industry. ‘Coolie’, one of the most hyped films of 2025, with an amazing ensemble cast, was marketed as what could be the next big outing this year. It had every single ingredient to make it the next pan-India biggie. Director with an impeccable record - check. Rajinikanth - check. A diverse star cast. Check. The film spans multiple timelines and locations. Rajasekhar’s (Sathyaraj) death leaves his elder daughter Preethi (Shruti Haasan), and her two sisters struggling. His long-time friend Deva (Rajinikanth), who runs a mansion house, comes to pay his last respects, but Preethi lashes out and asks him to get out. Days later, Deva finds out that there is more to Rajasekhar’s death than meets the eye.

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.