A propulsive bloodfest
Kill, featuring newcomer Lakshya in the leading role, is a 105minute brawl on a moving train.
Director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat trims more fat than I thought was possible from a Dharma screenplay; Sikhya Entertainment, a farhipper banner with an international outlook, is their coproducer on the film and was likely the countervailing influence. Amrit (Lakshya), an NSG commando, is unwinding from a recent assignment when a new crisis presents itself: his girlfriend, Tulika (Tanya Maniktala), is getting engaged to someone else. The match has been made against her will, at the behest of Tulika’s wealthy, influential father (Harsh Chhaya). With just a day to go, Amrit, a man of instant, indefatigable action, turns up in Ranchi to spirit Tulika out of the function. She declines — “Abort mission,” Amrit quickly alerts his tagalong Army buddy, Viresh (Abhishek Chauhan) — promising to reconvene in Delhi and elope on safer ground.
The following day, Tulika and her family board an overnight train to Delhi. Amrit shadows them on the journey, proposing to his beloved in the washroom before hunkering down with Viresh in a different coach. Also aboard is a gang of raggedy robbers, led by the lusty, psychotic Fani (Raghav Juyal). They seal off four compartments and jam off the signal — the train, thus, can barrel on unimpeded as they scare and loot the passengers. Then the fighting starts.
This is one of the gnarliest Hindi action films set to hit theatres in a long, long while. The action is slick, frantic, propulsive and all the other adjectives you can lavish on a Bollywood film with raw fight choreography and unembarrassing CGI. The sealedoff compartments of an Indian passenger train become the perfect sandbox for bloodsoaked mayhem. Action directors SeYeong Oh and Parvez Sheikh have worked on expansive productions — War, Tiger 3
— but they are no less inventive in these cramped spaces. The drapes of an AC sleeper coach are refurbished as death traps; there is a steady stream of clever decoys.
It soon emerges that the thieves are blood relatives; grief flows on both sides, catapulting the drama into a macabre waltz of revenge. Ketan Sodha’s music has distinct Western inflections.
Lakshya, hyped as Hindi cinema’s new ‘killing machine’, is sweaty, strong and seething. The young actor spurns the athleticism of a Tiger Shroff or Vidyut Jammwal, opting instead for a more centred, abrasive fighting style. What he lacks, perhaps, is a gift of the gab. The wisecracks mostly flow from Juyal, who is enjoyably looselimbed and rapacious as the wildeyed Fani.
As a furious Amrit rampages to and fro on this train of death, beheading, braining and setting human heads on fire, one wonders if Kill is the kind of recruitment ad the armed forces are expecting Bollywood to produce. This is a tremendously gory genre piece, fastidiously satisfying its own (and the audience’s) bloodlust.
Kill is currently running in theatres.