Oh good lord. I will, of course, refer you to my review of War 2 first (which scheduling, unfortunately, placed first in my double bill of contemporary Indian cinema at the weekend) so I don’t need to go over my entire “what the fuck do people want” line of inquiry again in relation to this, Rajinikanth’s latest slog which has, somehow, outperformed it both critically and commercially.

Look, I’ll admit it–I’m nonplussed by Rajinikanth. I basically haven’t seen anything where he wasn’t at least in his sixties, so I don’t have this long history where I can recognise his every twitch and pop for it, and I can’t really fail to notice that he’s deeply, deeply limited by being an elderly man. I don’t think there’s any shame in this! I mean Robert De Niro couldn’t pull off youthful in The Irishman, he’s in good company.

But listen, with Lokesh at the helm, I wanted to believe. While his films tend to have a lot of build up, they eventually go absolutely bananas, and I loved Kaithi, Vikram, even Leo a lot. But I have never been so thankful that a movie wasn’t in a shared universe. Because this is absolute drivel.

Now, the last Rajinikanth I was able to catch, Jailer, was almost unwatchable, but at least it was genuinely insane. This is just death. The setup is so neat and simple: a guy’s pal dies, so he has to investigate. Based on the title (which… listen, it’s weird that they named the film a slur) and the fact that it all revolves around a dock, you’d assume he’d go undercover as a dock worker and that would be the movie’s backbone.

No. He pretends that he knows how to use the cremation chair(?) that his friend invented(??) but which he couldn’t get a patent for(???) so that he can get close to the baddies, who specifically need to be able to get rid of bodies faster than normal for… reasons. Alright!

Meanwhile, the main baddie’s son is a customs officer in a love affair, and the baddies’ main enforcer is seeking out undercover cops, but maybe he’s also got secrets of his own. Oh and Rajinikanth owns a boarding house for students and his past relates to the docks… sort of. 

Coolie is full of these overlaid tangled paths for what should be simple threads and every single one ends frayed and unsatisfying. I legitimately cannot tell you why his pal died. I understand the circumstances surrounding it, but not the why, and I genuinely think everyone making this movie forgot.

Still, it’ll be fine because the songs and action will be good, right? [Padme meme face]

The solution for Rajinikanth’s limited abilities… not elegant. Dancing is reduced to “putting a handkerchief in his mouth and waving it about.” Fighting? They resort to the ol’ “Steven Segal”: he stands still, waves his arms and baddies go flying. This is not entertaining. Well, there’s a couple of other dudes on the poster, right? They’ll be in the movie and do cool stuff?

Well… let me just say I do think it should be illegal to put someone on the poster if they don’t have some sensible amount of screen time, or, like, any character at all. Kannada star Upendra appears to… stand still and punch dudes so they go flying (while Rajinikanth just stands there!) And it’s not so much that you could blink and miss Aamir Khan’s cameo so much as you’ll wish you had your eyes closed during it. Again: they’re on the bloody poster!

Even if I was all in on Rajinikanth’s screen presence, it feels impossible to overlook that his character seems to have absolutely no plan and just dodders about. He basically creates every problem that occurs after the intermission by being a huge dumbass (then gets drunk?) and seems to only get hurt at one point because he’s just standing around looking confused.

It’s not much better when he’s not on screen, though. The most tense and interesting part of this film I can best describe as “What if the Terminator had been played by Danny DeVito in a dog collar?” and it’s really not as good as it sounds.

Coolie is a bloated, confused mess, and I’d have had more fun if I’d just seen War 2 twice in a row. Hell, I’d rather have watched Jailer again than this–and that’s saying something.

Follow Mathew on Letterboxd.