Rajinikanth’s Coolie begins streaming: How much logical gap is too much in the age of instant trolling and YouTube breakdowns?

Coolie is the rare mainstream blockbuster where the absolute callous plotting is met by the most deranged and clumsy execution one could hope for from a theatrically engineered superstar vehicle. None of the details in this almost three-hour runtime make sense in retrospect, and it feels like a bloated mess strung together by the enigmatic presence of Rajinikanth, who somehow charms you, trusting the awkwardly put-together scenes. Even for Lokesh Kanagaraj, who has been criticized in the past for haphazard writing, Coolie seems like an outlier. The kind of rookie mistakes that you find in the works of lesser filmmakers show up in his first collaboration with Rajinikanth, one of the biggest stars of the country.  Those watching the film on streaming are likely to have a barrage of questions, which are not answered anywhere by real-world logic. No other commercial entertainer in recent times has been trolled to the extent of Coolie during its theatrical run for the sheer amount of careless mistakes sprinkled through the futile action set pieces. The further explorations of the mindless glaring holes in the film’s narrative are sure to go trending on social media in the next few days.

Also Read | Rajinikanth’s Coolie gets a streaming release date: When and where to watch it

You ask yourself questions like, why is Rajinikanth’s character Deva living alone? Why does he own a lodge? Why didn’t he try to visit his best friend and family over all these years? Why did Shruthi Haasan show such deep resentment towards a man she had hardly met? How is an ex-coolie like Rajasekhar a scientist all of a sudden? Why does a big-shot crime boss like Simon need a machine from Rajashekhar for such a silly reason?

It’s not that many of these questions don’t have answers or appear unexplained, but there is a clear lack of conviction in the way these basic screenwriting connections have been established. Lokesh is swept up in his unrelenting need to build up a mystique around ‘Deva’ so much so that he forgets to factor in any plausible reasons for the actions his character takes throughout the film. You get so many characters and revelations thrown at you as a sort of distraction to keep you wondering about the biggest weapon in the film’s possession—Rajinikanth’s real past and what the whole deal is about. But unlike Lokesh’s earlier films and their gradual method of information delivery through action, the screenplay is not focused on each setup and payoff to patiently make the fumbling ultimate revelations land better. Everything is a means to an end in Coolie. 

The streaming years have taught us to quietly sit back, analyze and shred away at wobbly writing, logical gaps, and convoluted staging of scenes in films. Each audience member is well tuned to picking out obvious flaws in the dramaturgy of a film that is working relatively well, but for a film where the basic drama itself is so poorly connected to the central ideas, you end up being intolerant after a point.

Each character in Coolie like Simon (Nagarjuna), Dhayal (Soubin Shahir), and Deva (Rajinikanth), act in mysterious ways unbeknownst to themselves for the single reason that is what the screenplay conveniently made them do or speak to move towards the next plot point. Coolie is the kind of film where a character in one location at a scene is shown to be in entirely different place in the following scene without any indication as to how that snap connect was made. For instance, there is a stretch in the film involving the attempted kidnapping of a central character that is some of the most baseless, carelessly staged action blocks I have seen in any mainstream film in the last few years. All the gradual highs painfully set up by Lokesh with a few nice touches are lost in the way those scenes are put together. 

Also Read | The Coolie effect: The star ensemble problem with our blockbuster cinema

As far as loglines go, here’s what Coolie is about — a coolie in hiding is forced to enter a world of crime to protect his long estranged family. The film, however, is not gracious enough with its characters motivations and screenwriting choices. Like why does a character lock himself up in a room for more than twenty years waiting for a whistle to make his entrance? Why does a man forget the face of someone who killed his father just like that? How does a machine which was so complex to operate end up being the murder weapon used by an unsuspecting character with no context? Why does anyone who is looking for Deva from his past don’t find the person who is literally running a lodge, named after himself? 

Also Read | Coolie and Empuraan: The problem with excessive fan theories and online film culture

The point is not about Coolie, but about a greater cultural shift in our movie watching experience, where memes take up so much of our headspace that it’s virtually impossible to separate ourselves from the constant noise of online discourse in our eventual enjoyment of a movie. Everyone seems to know all the important detail, character moments and the twists and revelations lose all their meaning in a world dominated by discourse. People get to experience a perceived version of the movie in their head, long before they have seen the actual movie. The trolls keep coming and you ask yourself; how much spoiler is too much spoiler? Youtubers have done the hard part of parsing through the movie in their heads and coming up with the many instances where the basic beats don’t add up and pretty much anyone online would have already watched a version of Coolie in their heads. There is no getting away from the hyper online content surrounding new releases these days. You can only keep yourself immune to the overload of information on films online to an extent. As curious viewers engaged in active movie watching and forming opinions, these are testing times.  With troll culture becoming a bane in our objective readings on cinema, filmmakers have to step up their game and ensure a seamless execution of ideas on screen and make the effort to come up with a cohesive experience, rather than sticking to temporary solutions to land a pre-determined release date. 

Also Read | Rajinikanth’s Coolie, Vijay’s Leo: The second half problem with the cinema of Lokesh Kanagaraj

There are glimpses of Lokesh working on ideas that could have used some more drafts in Coolie, like the old landline phone that connects a father with an long estranged child with a code that only they both understand; a ‘Bonny and Clyde’ like couple on the run who end up doing anything to survive and protect themselves; a team of sleeper cells like ex-coolie network who is waiting to return back to the normal life they once had; and much more. But Coolie is too comfortable being as generic and superficial with these strands as possible. The film will be a hot buzz topic on social media for the coming few weeks and once can only hope to get more plot holes, logical gaps and convenient errors being pointed out in the near future with the film starting its streaming shelf life.