by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $17.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Lakshya, Tanya Maniktala, Raghav Juyal
Intro:
The squeamish need not apply, but for action lovers, you’d simply be mad to miss this train.
After dealing with some lighter genres, like the romantic drama Hurdang and the comedy Brij Mohan Amar Rahe!, director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat has stepped into new territory with his latest: Kill, a blood-soaked action-thriller.
Showing a similar devotion to movement and fluidity as The Raid, Bhat along with DP Rafey Mehmood and second unit director Rishabh Dixit manage to make the inside of a cramped and crowded train feel spacious enough to swing a fist around. With an emphasis on melee weapons (along with some improvisation, including a great ad for Zippo lighters), the depiction of Indian commando Amrit (Lakshya) going all John McClane on a family of thieves is electrifying, both in its consistent energy and the sheer brutality of the fights themselves. It’s a wonder that any one person is still breathing after a few seconds on-screen, but with this level of expertly-crafted carnage candy, it’s difficult to argue.
Less arguable, though, is the tonal weirdness. Not that it is as wayward genre-wise as its Bollywood neighbours (even if its introduction is like something out of a particularly fluffy rom-com), but the way it handles the violence can be a bit of a push-and-pull. It’s as if someone tried to split the difference between the pre- and post-9/11 eras of Garth Ennis’ The Punisher, both highlighting violent revenge as inherently dehumanising and relishing the chance to be an ultraviolent Elmer Fudd cartoon.
Where this gets weirder is that it still works. The emphasis on how much each death matters to the characters, on both sides, hits the camp sweet spot. It shows that these are more than just blood balloons ready to burst, humanising everyone involved, but it also becomes rather farcical in just how frequently characters will get fridged, to recharge either our protagonist or our villains, like a kind of death tennis volley. That it doesn’t really abandon its earlier romantic leanings just makes it come across even weirder, and at the same time, even more entertaining.
The ideal film isn’t one without flaws, but one whose flaws end up buoying what it genuinely gets right. In that light, Kill is an ideal action-thriller; a rampaging beast that demolishes anything and everything in its path, including whether the filmmakers and the film itself is in on the joke. It’s a solid 105 minutes of percussive filmmaking, where every technical aspect exists solely to punctuate the impact of every fist, hammer, and fire extinguisher on the human body, leaving room for neither dead air nor air in the audience’s lungs from gasping or just laughing out loud. The squeamish need not apply, but for action lovers, you’d simply be mad to miss this train.
