Director: Manmohan Desai; Writer: Prayag Raj, Pushpa Raj Sharma, K.K. Shukla, Kader Khan; Cinematographer: Peter Pereira; Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Waheeda Rehman, Rishi Kapoor, Rati Agnihotri, Shoma Anand, Suresh Oberoi, Kader Khan, Om Shivpuri, Satyen Kappoo, Nilu Phule, Goga, Puneet Issar
Duration: 02:51:11; Aspect Ratio: 1.346:1; Hue: 25.418; Saturation: 0.071; Lightness: 0.350; Volume: 0.224; Cuts per Minute: 21.139
Summary: Remembered mainly as the film in which
Bachchan suffered a near-fatal accident. The
frame recording the incident is frozen as the
legend of his injury flashes on to the screen. It
is also Manmohan Desai’s most aggressively
communal film. Iqbal (Bachchan) is orphaned
when the villain Zafar (Khan) kills his father
and rapes his mother Salma (Rehman). Zafar
also bursts a dam killing hundreds of people.
Iqbal grows up to become a leader of the
coolies (porters) at a railway station. Other
characters are the drunken journalist Sunny
(Kapoor), a foster-child of the villain who
befriends Iqbal, and the rich heroine Julie
(Agnihotri) whose father was also killed by the
villain. The end of the film, shot at the Haji Ali
mosque in Bombay, makes an appeal to the
lumpenised Muslim underclass when an
injured Iqbal invokes the power of Allah to
deal the death blow to the villain. Iqbal also
enjoys an electoral triumph over Zafar,
foreshadowing Bachchan’s election as an MP in
1984. Not to be confused with the Malayalam
film Coolie (also 1983) directed by Ashok
Kumar.
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