5 min readNew DelhiUpdated: Jul 22, 2023 08:55 AM IST
The summer of 1982 was a difficult time for Amitabh Bachchan and his fans. The actor, who held a god-like status in the country, was critically injured on the sets of Manmohan Desai’s film and the world, as his fans knew it, came to a halt. While shooting for an action sequence, which probably didn’t seem that dangerous, the actor was hurt so badly that he had to be flown from Bangalore to Mumbai, and was even clinically dead for a few minutes before the doctors brought him back to life. The incident changed our understanding of stardom and, eventually, the fate of Desai’s Coolie, which became the highest grossing film of 1983.
With Coolie, director Manmohan Desai was making what was then called a ‘Muslim social’ (where the primary characters of the film were Muslims) and by casting Bachchan in the lead role while he was at his peak, he dreamed of making the biggest film of the genre. Coolie, like many other Desai films, works only if you stop asking logical questions. The film demands you to accept the exaggerated version of its reality, and take it seriously. But, even with these conditions in place, Coolie isn’t the best Desai-Bachchan film. In fact, it’s not even close to the heightened reality presented in Amar Akbar Anthony, Parvarish, or even Suhaag for that matter.
Coolie is the story of Iqbal (Bachchan), who is separated from his parents as a child. As a grown-up, he learns about the man who is responsible for drugging and abducting his mother, and makes it his mission to bring her back. But, halfway through the production of the film, when Amitabh met with the near-fatal accident, the film’s end was rewritten and the story that Desai intended to tell was changed. It wasn’t about Iqbal anymore, it was all about Bachchan and respecting the public sentiment at the time, Desai went ahead with it. Initially, Bachchan’s character was supposed to die at the hands of Kader Khan’s Zafar in the climax sequence. But watching Bachchan die on screen would have been a nightmare for his fans at that point, so, the end was changed. “Audiences would have been very disappointed if after the accident Amitabh was shown dying at the end of Coolie,” Desai shared in a Filmfare interview. The new ending of the film wasn’t for Coolie, or Iqbal, it was for Bachchan, who got a chance to thank his fans for their prayers.
After Amitabh Bachchan’s accident on the set of Coolie, the world of his fans came to a standstill.
Amitabh’s accident redefined how India understood stardom and his eventual return to the sets of Coolie was nothing short of a celebration. In his memoir Khullam Khulla, Rishi Kapoor, who was also a part of the film, shared that over one lakh people were present on the day when Amitabh returned. “Over one lakh people turned up for the shoot and local dadas had to be requisitioned for the bandobast as it was beyond the means of the police,” he recalled. In fact, the first scene he decided to shoot when he rejoined the set was the one that had left him injured. “I told Manmohan Desai. When I resume shooting, I want it to start from the same shot where I fell during the accident. I had wanted to get up and punch the villain. This is exactly what I did,” Bachchan recalled in a Facebook post a few years ago.
All of this changed the perception of Coolie. This was now the film that could have been the end of Bachchan so the audience at the time, who could not get over the shock of his accident, was just thankful to see him alive and well. The punch that left Bachchan injured is marked in the film with text and freeze frame. It is a reminder that movies are a make-believe world, and the people working in them are mortals and not the gods the audience makes them out to be.
But, 40 years later, the film does not have the same impact, for obvious reasons. We don’t live in a world where Desai’s exaggerated storytelling would find as much acceptance. Although, Rohit Shetty has often been compared to the veteran director but the gags that Shetty seems to pull off are not as amplified as the ones we often saw in Desai’s films. For instance, the inclusion of Allah Rakha in Coolie, who is more of a saviour and hero than Amitabh’s Iqbal, is not something that Shetty could pull off. Another reason for the film’s success was the love that the fans had for Bachchan. Of course, the love hasn’t diminished much but the euphoria of that moment can never be recreated, and it was this excitement that made Coolie a massive hit.
Amitabh has been a part of films that have been much more significant than Coolie, but for his fans, this was the film that made them realise that he wasn’t just another actor they liked, he was the man who defined cinema.
After Amitabh Bachchan’s accident on the set of Coolie, the world of his fans came to a standstill.
Amitabh Bachchan starrer Coolie was the biggest hit of 1983.