Sometimes, simply having a guy punch another guy in the face us all you need for action cinema to cross the great divide of a language barrier. The thrill of it is universal and nothing bores through cultural barriers faster that watching a hero and a villain try to open each other up like the mail – well, except maybe Mr. Bean, I guess. Over the years, various different countries have unleashed action epics of varying brutality, from the Hong Kong conflagrations of John Woo to the savage, Indonesian bloodletting of The Raid movies. Well, the latest country to finally weigh in with a spot of murderous intent is India – but even though they’ve been making grand, action-packed epics for years, there’s something about the stripped-back, almost bestial Kill that feels a little different.
Being advertised as the most violent action movie out of India may seem a little reductive, but damn it if it isn’t true and in a world full of John Wick wannabes, Nikhil Bhat’s gore soaked thrill ride might have the big, hairy cojones to match it.
Swooningly handsome army commando Amrit has just come back from a mission with his best buddy, Viresh, but upon settling down, he receives a photo e that immediately unsettles him in double quick time. It seems like his beloved, the loving Tulika, is being given away in an arranged marriage to a man she doesn’t love and after hearing her pleas, Amrit and Viresh vow to swoop over there on the day of the engagement and rescue her from this uncomfortable predicament.
So far, so Bollywood – but upon arriving, Amtit finds that Tulika is handling this turn of events far better than he thought after she assures him that she may be engaged to another, but the only man she’ll ever marry is him. Before you know it, Tulika’s entire family is on a train back to Dheli, with Amrit and Viresh also heading back in a separate car, but it’s here where things start to go a bit dodgy. You see, also aboard the train is a gang of around thirty five bandits who are all mostly connected by familial bonds who have planned an audacious heist. Blocking out everyone’s phone reception and swarming the train with various sharp implements, they plan to rob everyone and then make off with their sizable haul at a planned stop. However, after the gang’s swaggering leader, Fani, recognizes Tulika’s father as the wealthy businessman that he is, he urges his father, Beni, to turn this robbery into a full scale kidnapping and go for the real money.
However, Amrit and Viresh are hardly sitting on their hands while waiting for this whole thing to blow over, and so they start doing their best to thwart this sudden assault the best way they know how. However, when the bandit who happens to be Fani’s uncle is killed and Viresh is badly wounded, things start to take a sinister turn – but when a gut wrenching tragedy occurs, Amrit realises that the only way he can possibly save the day us to kill.
Like, everyone.
There’s a temptation to lump Kill in with that other major India set brawl-a-thon, Dev Pattel’s bloodthirsty Monkey Man, and yet this scrappier, more direct thriller, that’s been helmed by Indian filmmaker, Nikhil Bhat, proves to be something of an impressively sneaky bugger when it comes to defying expectations and wrong footing you whenever it can. You see, at the start of the film, anyone who hasn’t seen those ads that proudly boast that the movie is the most violent film to come out of India might be fooled into thinking that the tone of the flick is more in line with the more typically melodramatic material that comes out of the country. When Lakshya’s ridiculously handsome lead removes his tactical helmet at the start of the film, we’re treated to a thoroughly unnecessary electric guitar lick on the soundtrack that feels more from the days of Con Air than the realms of an actioner that’s supposed to square up to Gareth Evans’ The Raid. Similarly Tanya Maniktala’s doe-eyed romantic interest seems to very much fit the usual mold of the virtuous, pining female lead wuth a strict father that you’d usually attribute to Indian cinema, but as the movie progresses, these stock tropes gradually lose their soft edges and soft-focused innocence as matters rapidly spin out of control.
From the starting point of a modern, Indian soap opera, Kill swiftly shifts into Die Hard territory the moment the bandits make their presence known and Bhat is wise enough to give a sizable contingent of this cluster of bad guys a personality, or at the very least, make a few have some defining, visual traits – even if that trait is that they’re fucking huge. From here, the movie is able to raise the stakes to a degree that fully justify an audacious, mid-film switch that completes Kill’s final journey from soap opera, to Die Hard rip off, to probably what is one of the most bruising action movies of the year.
Not to give too much away, a twist happens that literally strips whatever innocence the movie claimed to have and its formally righteous hero becomes a blood thirsty engine of destruction as he vows to take out each and every bandit on the train that’s still breathing.
It not only is a tonal shift that feels earned (the title amusingly doesn’t appear on the screen until around forty five minutes into the movie to really drive the point home), but it manages to make this left turn into carnage territory actually carry some emotional weight that proves to be deeper than that upsettingly sizable gash on Amrit’s cheek. You see, while our hero shifts into bezerker mode, the fact that the people he’s slaughtering are all related to the other bandits mean that everything is ridiculously personal and it leads to interesting dissension within the ranks for various reasons. While Raghav Juyal’s charismatic wild card, Fani, is happy to kill for kicks despite family members and friend dropping like flies around him, his father is adamant that Tulika’s wealthy father must be eliminated as he’s convinced that the wealthy man will pump his considerable riches into hunting down any member of the bandits who manages to escape.
While this adds a great bit of urban commentary, it’s the jaw unhinging violence we’re here to see and Bhat’s stunt team certainly doesn’t disappoint with some staggeringly bestial finishing moves loaded in the barrel to make you squeal with horror and joy in equal measure. But even when our hero has regressed to the point where he’s stringing the dead bodies of his kills up as in the passenger carriages in a firm of terror tactics that stands as possibly the ballsiest action hero flex since John McClane stuffed a terrorist in an elevator with a silly not on his chest, the film remembers that all of this spectacular gore only matters if the audience gives a show about the people it’s leaking from. In this respect, Kill is killing it.
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