An ultra-violent film about violence, Kill's greatest accomplishment isn't its death count alone but to challenge our perception of violence, observes Sukanya Verma.
'Aise kaun marta hai, bey?'
After more than 100 minutes of nonstop bloodshed in a running train, the stunned antagonist of Kill catches his breath and balks at the brute force demonstrated by his opponent who, he is now convinced, is more 'rakshas' than 'rakshak'.
Chopped limbs, charred skin, stabbed throats, decapitated bodies, suspended corpses, men tossed out of a train window like fruit peels, skulls banged so hard against steel handles they leave behind a trail of blood and brains on the floor even as knife wielding men unleash their supply of machetes, cleavers, daggers to slice open anything flesh and blood.
An ultra-violent film about violence, Kill's greatest accomplishment isn't its death count alone but to challenge our perception of violence.
Between the gut-punching gratification it delivers, there's also food for thought in comparing evil born out of necessity as well as retaliation depending on which side of the socioeconomic spectrum one belongs to.
Heroes coming to the rescue by beating a dozen baddies into pulp is a timeworn trope in Hindi movies.
What sweetens the deal is the element of complexity in both good and bad and the bloody heights their unbridled aggression attains when lines of morality are blurred. Few have explored this rot in human psyche like the Korean New Wave.
Twenty years ago, Park Chan-wook crafted the most savage one-man onslaught the world has ever witnessed and paved the way for future claustrophobic corridor carnages.
Hailed as the Holy Grail of influential action sequences on which the likes of John Wick were built as part of their relentless revenge spree, Oldboy's unhinged depiction of violence as an art form is a genre that as nauseating as it is exhilarating.
Director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat's Kill adopts the minimalism of Chan-wook's fury and plants it against the endless hell of a confined space, underscored in another Korean winner Train to Busan's horrific zombie ride and fashions something so deadly and devilish, it's Bollywood coming-of-rage, really.
Unlocking new levels in grindhouse fare with its perceptive interplay and sly political subtext, Kill's singular belief in how nothing-to-lose can empower in the most beastly ways frees its storytelling from the burden of details.
Amrit (Lakshya) and Tulika (Tanya Maniktala) are head over heels in love.
But Tulika's dad Baldev Singh Thakur (could it be Harsh Chhaya is doffing his hat at the iconic patriarch from the daddy of Bollywood's most violent films, Sholay) has strong-armed her into an engagement to a guy of his choice where the celebratory gunfire at the function held in Ranchi hints at a history of honour killings if defied.
Only NSG commando Amrit has bigger fish to fry, which he soon finds out when he boards the train she and her folks are taking back home from Ranchi to Delhi.
Accompanied by his wingman Viresh (Abhishek Chauhan), Amrit's plans to design his happily-ever-after are rudely interrupted when a group of armed bandits, tactically deployed across the first class bogies, get on with their premeditated plundering.
Fani (Raghav Juyal), a loutish punk whose daddy issues and cricket analogies are as beguiling as the cruelty and creepiness he conceals under his slithery charm, happens to be the executor of this task. Enough gruesome instances follow to explain why his old man (Ashish Vidyarthi) and the mastermind of the mission has little faith in his son's abilities.
First premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival as part of its Midnight Madness section, the script's fleeting flashbacks and familiar foreshadowing of fates is more to save time than kill it on emotions that would derail the bigger picture.
Fani and his father's ongoing differences as well as the growing insecurities Amrit's wrath brings about in the clan of hoodlums, sharing a WhatsApp group called Happy Family, work as a parallel against the traumatised passengers and their kin experiencing danger, daredevilry and death on every move.
It's uncanny how alike Amrit and Fani's boys in beards appear, which only makes Fani's vicious pleasure in his menace as disturbing as the havoc wreaked by Amrit's vendetta.
The two young men playing them are perfectly cast in their roles as tit for tat.
Raghav Juyal is a revelation.
His Fani's flair for rubbing in the irony of a situation conveys something that's not just sardonic but anti-establishment in its wit. Not only does he get all the killer lines but the riotous manner in which he delivers them they acquire a sur and sting that's entirely of the actor's making.
His performance reminded of what Japanese auteur and God of violent cinema Takeshi Kitano once said: Humour is like violence. They come to you unexpectedly, and the more unpredictable they both are, the better it gets.
Raghav is a personification of this philosophy.
On the other hand, Lakshya's Amrit is a Bruce Lee, Rambo, John McClane and Sunny Deol rolled in one.
His wallop is mightier than his word and Lakshya conveys the straightforward might of his force and frustration without hesitation.
Tanya's bright presence quickly achieves the beating heart as well as the gaping hole it leaves without slowing down Kill's reckless momentum.
Ashish Vidyarthi's seasoned skills are a perfect fit to play a man fighting his doom from the hands of the only one who can call his hypocrisy out.
There are numerous characters we come across and identify from their clothes or despair on a rare rueful note.
Breathlessly racing ahead, the sleeper car's constrained setting becomes a venue for grisly chaos and raw impulses, which lend the frenzy a terrifying texture, a real-time urgency in the abject absence of SOS.
Editor Shivkumar V Panicker's taut grip on the proceedings, Cinematographer Rafey Mehmood's swift camerawork, Subhash Sahoo's excellent sound design capturing the beats of a running train and raging terror and Action Directors Se-yeong Oh and Parvez Shaikh's banger action pieces contribute significantly to Kill's bloodbath, which is now up for a Hollywood remake after its official rights were bought by the makers of John Wick.
But it's not like the dead, mourned by either side of the moral scales, are mere fuel for Amrit's great train rampage.
If anything, it's the futility in these killings that provokes both broken hearts and brotherhood.
By now, it's amply obvious that Kill's brand of mayhem is not for the faint of heart.
But if its refusal to resort to misogyny and foul language for hostile effect can lure you into submission, Bhat's livid piece of work, co-produced by Guneet Monga and Karan Johar, deserves to be congratulated for breaking the monotony of superstardom-dictated action bonanzas.
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