Coolie (1983 Hindi film)

Coolie (transl. Porter) is a 1983 Indian action comedy film, directed by Manmohan Desai and written by Kader Khan. The film stars Amitabh Bachchan as Iqbal Aslam Khan, a railway coolie, who was separated from his mother Salma (Waheeda Rehman) due to Zafar's (Kader Khan) obsession with her. This obsession causes the destruction of her family and her mental breakdown. Years later, fate unites her sons, Iqbal and Sunny (Rishi Kapoor) and they set out to save Salma from Zafar's captivity. It also starred Rati Agnihotri, Shoma Anand, Suresh Oberoi and Puneet Issar.

The film was released on 2 December 1983 and became the highest-grossing film of the year. It did ₹21 crore (US$20.71 million) in gross revenue. It made over ₹1 crore (US$986,397.58) per territory, a rare achievement for the time and was a huge blockbuster.

The film is also infamous for a fight scene with co-star Puneet Issar, during which Bachchan had a near-fatal injury due to a miscalculated jump. In the final cut of the film, the fight scene during which he was injured was frozen and a message appears marking the scene as the one in which he was injured. The original script showed Bachchan dying after Kader Khan shot him. But later on, after the injury-and-recovery episode, Desai thought that this would have a negative impact on the movie as well as a bad feeling in the audience, decided to change the ending. The modified ending has the hero recover after his operation.

According to film expert Rajesh Subramanian Manmohan Desai a great admirer of Hrishikesh Mukerjee requested the veteran director cum editor to edit Coolie.