One-Line Review: Coolie had everything to make it something phenomenal, and yet landed flat.
Coolie Youtube Trailer
Cast: Rajinikanth, Nagarjuna, Sruthi Haasan, etc.
Release Date: August 14, 2025
Director: Lokesh Kanagaraj
Coolie Review: Burdened by its own weight, this Rajinikanth-starrer misses paying its dues.
~ Cinema Express
Introduction
Deva, a mansion warden, tries to find out the reason behind his best friend’s death, which connects him to the past he left behind years ago.
Our rating for Coolie is 5/10.
Summary
Deva, a mansion warden, learns that his best friend, Rajasekhar, passed away due to cardiac arrest. Being devastated, he attends the funeral. Rajasekhar’s daughter, Preeti, gets furious at Deva for attending the funeral and forces him out. Deva finds out that Rajasekhar’s death was a murder and is linked to Simon, a gangster who controls a port for illegal activities. Deva and Preeti both try to dig into the reasons for Rajaeskhar’s death. Deva learns it is all linked to Rajasekhar’s invention—an electric chair that is built to cremate stray animals by electrocuting the corpses. Simon would have made Rajasekhar and Preeti modify the chair to help him burn human corpses for his business.
Deva slowly unearths the underlying reasons for Rajasekhar’s death, involving Dayal, Simon’s right-hand guy. The rest of the story is about how Deva plans to avenge his best friend’s death and how Simon learns Deva’s past is connected to his life in a twisted manner.
Review
Lokesh Kanagaraj’s name was more than a brand—a promise. One can confidently watch his movies, as there is a minimum guarantee of their quality. Unfortunately, it went terribly wrong with Coolie. With plot holes the size of planets, there was no way anyone could justify what was happening in the story.
With a huge star cast, everyone was prepared to watch something extraordinary in Coolie. While Lokesh blames people for being so expectant themselves, he was wrong in that aspect. It was Lokesh’s natural style to deliver good movies with many wow moments. Hence, the expectations were a given, which were nowhere met. Performance-wise, everyone justified their characters.
Rajinikanth was as usual, packed with attitude and style, and contrary to most times, he had a lot of scope to perform too as an actor. Sruthi was exceptional, as was Preeti. Nagarjuna was as menacing as he could get in his first negatively shaded character. Sathyaraj was good, and so was Upendra, who, in a way, became a saving grace for the narration after a point. Soubin Shahir could be termed the best performer in Coolie. But what about their characters, the story, and basic logic—all lame!
When we know the problem A’s answer lies in B, Lokesh makes the characters go all the way to Z, creating unnecessary confusion. People can’t be blamed for bashing Coolie left, right, and center because everything was that absurd. Anirudh can only do so much to save an entire movie single-handedly! With so many possibilities to make this movie a one-time wonder, Lokesh went with a completely flat script, with so many forced elements that made things too hard to digest. The de-aging work by the team during the flashback portions was a feast to watch, where Rajinikanth appears as a Coolie.
In short, Coolie was lame, uninteresting, and flat. Only the flashback portions that show an old avatar of Rajini felt like something worth it in this movie.
Conclusion
A lame, avoidable craft by logic that is full of loopholes that lacks logic – That’s Coolie for you.
