Coolie's story is a bit messy and complicated. But the impact is made by Lokesh Kanagaraj's mass appealing direction and well written characters. The film has several moments that will lead to applause and keep the interest going. However, as mentioned above, the writing is an issue and should have been better for a greater impact. Rajinikanth rocks the show and it's fascinating how he manages to rock the show at this age. Nagarjuna rocks the show with his rare antagonist act. Soubin Shahir (Dayal) is a surprise of the film. Shruti Haasan lends able support while Sathyaraj is decent in a small role. Speaking of cameos, Upendra is first rate while Aamir Khan is terrific. All in all, Coolie is a timepass mass entertainer.

My rating - *** out of 5!

COUNTRY GEARS UP FOR WAR 2 VS COOLIE

Tomorrow, two of the biggest films of the year, War 2 and Coolie, will be released and the excitement for both is significant. War 2 belongs to the popular Yash Raj Films (YRF) Spy Universe and stars Hrithik Roshan, Jr NTR and Kiara Advani. The makers haven’t given out the story and at a recent promotional event, both the male actors assured that the real plot of the film will surprise the audience. From the assets, it looks like a big-scale action entertainer. Interestingly, it is directed by Ayan Mukerji and there’s curiosity to know how he has helmed a film of this sort.

However, the excitement is limited. The trailer and teaser didn’t work as intended. Many feel that there has been a fatigue with such slick action films and that it looks repetitive. The songs haven’t become chartbusters. As a result, the advance booking has been just okay.

War’s first part, which released in 2019, opened at Rs. 50.61 crores. It is unlikely that War 2 can reach this mark on its first day. It is expected to open around Rs. 35 crores with an outside chance of the film hitting Rs. 40 crores. If the reports are positive, the next day will be huge due to the Independence Day holiday. This is when War 2 can collect not just Rs. 50 crore plus but even cross the Rs. 60 crore mark. A four-day weekend in the range of Rs. 150 crores and Rs. 200 crores will be ideal. However, if word of mouth is not encouraging, it can prove detrimental.

Coolie stars Rajinikanth in the lead role with Aamir Khan in a cameo. It is all set for a record opening in the original Tamil version, especially in the home market of Tamil Nadu and overseas. Not much was expected from its Hindi version. But it will be a surprise, looking at the advance booking. Despite opposition from War 2, it has managed to secure good showcasing as it became clear that there’s a demand to see the film.

Coolie in Hindi will open at Rs. 4 crores and can go upto Rs. 5-5.50 crores. If reports are on its side, it can have an extended weekend of Rs. 25 crores plus.

Rishi Kapoor is among the ten actors in the Hindi film industry to have given 25 HITS as male lead in the 100 year history of Hindi cinema. The other nine being Dilip Kumar, Dharmendra, Rajesh Khanna, Jeetendra, Amitabh Bachchan, Mithun Chakraborty, Salman Khan, Akshay Kumar and Shah Rukh Khan. This is not counting the HITS given as character artistes which will add to the numbers. These actors are the biggest that the Hindi film industry has ever seen.

The biggest BLOCKBUSTER of Rishi Kapoor is BOBBY (1973) which was also his first film as main lead. The film will have business of 500 crore nett plus based on its footfalls at the average ticket rate of 2018. The film was a huge craze celebrating around 30 silver jubilees across the country. In Mumbai it went silver at Metro and Broadway while in Delhi it hit 25 weeks at Regal and Moti. The film actually had a late release in Delhi as the initial release came in Mumbai and East Punjab circuits and both circuits saw record breaking initial. The East Punjab centres of Haryana like Gurgaon and Rohtak saw groups of youths coming from Delhi (where the film was yet to be released) to watch the film only to struggle for tickets. But the East Punjab exhibitors were famous for allowing the theatres to go over capacity by putting seats up on the sides and aisles which meant some of the Delhi crowd was able to watch.

Many of the Rishi Kapoor blockbusters are musicals and this is where the actor scored heavily. A sign of a popular actor in India is the comfortabilty in songs and Rishi Kapoor excelled here. The songs are the toughest part in Hindi cinema because it is very easy to look out of place and very few have managed to succeed here and this is proven by the fact that every generation has so few genuinely popular actors. Actually in India its the ability to perform in songs that separates the greats with the others. Its one of the reasons that in the 100 year history of Hindi cinema that many actors have been called great by the media but the audience never put them on the same pedestal and this will continue in the future also as the audience demands the near perfect hero. All the actors in the 25 plus HIT group above were supremely comfortable in songs whether they could dance or not;

The list of Rishi Kapoor films which will have a value of 200 crore nett or today is below. All the films listed below will have a classification of SUPER HIT or higher. The numbers are apprx and grouped as the films have not been entered into the database to get the exact number.

500 crore plus
1. Bobby (1973)

400 crore plus
2. Coolie (1983)
3. Naseeb (1981)

300 crore plus
4. Amar Akbar Anthony (1977)
5. Laila Majnu (1976)

250 crore plus
7. Hum Kisise Kum Naheen (1977)
8. Prem Rog (1982)
9. Kabhi Kabhie (1976)
10. Sargam (1979)
11. Nagina (1986)

200 crore plus
12. Kaatilon Ke Kaatil (1981)
13. Henna (1991)
14. Chandni (1989)
15. Deewana (1992)

Puneet Issar talks about filmmaker Tulsi Ramsay, who passed away on Friday
Ismat Tahseen (BOMBAY TIMES; December 16, 2018)

Tulsi Ramsay, King of Bollywood’s horror genre with films like Purana Mandir and Veerana, passed away on Friday. Talking about their equation, actor Puneet Issar, says, “Tulsi Ramsay has been my mentor. In 1982, he and his brother Shyam Ramsay, came to me for Purana Mandir. I was doing Coolie then for Manmohan Desai, and after that Coolie accident, the brothers came to me saying, 'Mr Puneet, we would like to work with you. We want to make this film Purana Mandir. The film had Mohnish Bahl and Aarti Gupta, too'. It became a super duper hit and ran for almost 100 weeks non-stop. Today, it’s considered a cult film. I also did a 3-D film called Saamri for them. Tulsi was a very fine human being and the Ramsays are a very good family — seven brothers into cinema. He and his brothers were ahead of their times; they had started doing horror in 1978-80, which is a big thing. They are the pioneers as far as horror films are concerned. Tulsi’s passing away is sad news, but that I guess is life. I pray that God rests his soul in peace and gives his family the strength to cope up with the situation.” 

Nayandeep Rakshit (DNA; August 6, 2018)

Sonam Kapoor aka Sonam K Ahuja and Rhea Kapoor have already come up with diverse themes — from the nostalgic ’80s to kites, balloons, mogras, emojis and Relaxistan — as part of their clothing line Rheson. Now, they will launch a new collection, which is inspired by famous Bollywood films.

Says a source, “It will be called ‘Movie Posters’. Rhea and Sonam came up with the idea of giving a fresh take to some iconic Hindi film characters from the ’80s and ’90s. Since both of them are ’80s kids and belong to a film family, cinema has played a huge role in their growing up years. One day, they just happened to crack this idea and the whole team loved it.” Adds the source, “What makes this range different is that it asks the question — ‘What if all heroes were heroines?’ The sisters, who are known for their sartorial flair, wanted to curate a line dedicated to movie posters of iconic male superstars but envisaging them all as women. It will include T-shirts, shirts, sweatshirts, dresses and jackets.”

It will comprise six characters. “They have given a new spin to their father’s Mr India character, too. When Anil Kapoor saw it, he loved it. They will also have a gender reversal of Amitabh Bachchan’s Coolie avatar,” informs the source. A few days ago, Sonam wore the Mr India sweatshirt at the airport.

Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; December 22, 2015)

Puneet Issar met Manmohan Desai on the sets of Naseeb. The filmmaker wanted to record something and was looking for a martial arts artiste with a good voice. Yash Johar, who was a friend of Puneet's father, director Sudesh Issar, took him to Desai, who was impressed with not just his baritone and black belt, but also his personality and perfect-10 physique, and decided to cast him as the main villain in his next film, Coolie, again featuring Amitabh Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor.

July 26, 1982... it was Puneet's first day on the sets and his first shot. They were canning a well rehearsed action sequence in which Bachchan and he were supposed to trade punches. A mistimed jump and a punch that should have been dodged took the Big B down with a ruptured intestine. And made Puneet Issar infamous!

"He'd been rushed from Bangalore to Mumbai's Breach Candy Hospital for an emergency splenectomy. I read newspaper reports of his deteriorating condition and panicked," reminisces Puneet, who was invited by the actor to the hospital. "I went with my wife who donated blood for him. He had always been my hero and seeing him so weak and ill, weighing hardly 50 kgs, I was guilt-stricken."

Bachchan realised what Puneet was feeling and tried to convince him he wasn't at fault. In a hoarse whisper he narrated how, for a Prakash Mehra film, he was supposed to throw a glass at Vinod Khanna. The timing went awry during the take and the glass hit Vinod on the chin, cutting it open. He needed four stitches but reassured Bachchan, pointing out that it had been an accident.

"I understand what you are going through and I can only repeat Vinod's words to me. Relax, it was an accident," Bachchan told Puneet, putting a comforting arm around his shoulder and walking him to where fans and the media waited to convince everyone that the "kid" was not to blame.

Once, when Puneet was exiting the hospital, a group of ladies stopped him to enquire about their idol's health. "Do you know someone tried to kill him, if that person ever comes in front of me, I'll kill him," insisted one of them, little realising that the young man, who was suddenly intent on making a quick, exit was the 'culprit'.

Six months later, Bachchan returned to work at Chandivali Studio. They started from where they had left off. This time everything went off well. And Puneet continued to learn from the man he idolised. "Once, I saw him sitting in a corner of a stifling hot studio in Chennai, wrapped in a blanket, going over his lines and wondered if he wasn't feeling hot. He said he would if he thought about it, it was all in the mind," smiles Puneet, remembering how between shots, they would play cricket, with him trying to get Desai out. "If Manji hadn't become a movie maker he would have been India's no. 1 batsman."

Coolie opened on November 14, 1983, to a rousing reception. The fight sequence was frozen at the point of impact with a superimposed message. Desai rewrote the ending with Bachchan's character cheating death on screen too.

Puneet, the monster who had almost killed the demi-God, continued to be flooded with hate mail. Several makers dropped him and it was a six-year struggle for the actor till he got a call to audition for BR Chopra's TV serial, Mahabharata. Puneet, who was a speech, diction and method acting professor at Roshan Taneja's acting school, impressed the veteran director and landed the role of Bheem. "But I wanted to play Duryodhana; that was the performance-oriented role and would give me a chance to break out of the image of a fighter. I finally convinced them to let me play the eldest of the Kauravas. We started shooting towards the end of '88 and finally my luck turned. I'm still remembered for that near-fatal hit but now people agree that it wasn't deliberate. It was destiny," he signs off.