KILL - Mark Reviews Movies

Kill, Lionsgate / Roadside Attractions

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 3, 2024

The premise of Kill wears thin quickly, but what does one expect from a story that's set almost exclusively on a passenger train? There's simply nowhere the characters can go and not much space for them to operate, but that's a major part of the appeal of the action of writer/director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat's film. These characters, especially our relentless hero, have to make do with their surroundings and circumstances, and they do so with cleverly brutal results.

That setup is about as simple as can be. We meet Amrit (Lakshya, an Indian television star making his leading-role debut in a movie), a captain with the military's special forces, who has been having a secret romance with Tulika (Tanya Maniktala), the daughter of a powerful industry magnate. While on leave, the commando receives news from his love that he has been dreading: Her father has arranged an engagement to another man.

The two plan to run away together and elope, with Tulika taking a train trip with the whole of her family to New Delhi, where Amrit will be waiting for her. Instead, he can't wait and books a ticket for the same train. Whatever plot and complications might seem to ready to arise from this introduction mean very little, though.

There are other people on the train with very different plans. Namely, we're talking about three dozen or so bandits, preparing to rob all of the passengers on the loosely guarded train.

One of them jams the cellphone signals aboard, and the rest get to work—killing the one guard on duty, threatening or enacting violence upon anyone who resists, and nabbing every wallet, purse, and piece of jewelry on which they can get their hands. Obviously, they make the mistake of attacking people in the same compartment where Amrit and his fellow commando Viresh (Abhishek Chauhan) are, and the two fight back to defend themselves and their fellow passengers.

From here, there really isn't much more to say about the plot, except that the stakes of Amrit's mission escalate when Tulika and her family, save for a younger sister (played by Adirja Sinha) who leaves before the raid and has to be found later, are taken hostage. The bandits' leader on the train is Fani (Raghav Juyal), a criminal who can improvise plans and perform vicious violence with an equal level of chilling calm, who knows Tulika's father Baldev Singh Thakur (Harsh Chhaya) can get the thieves more money from a ransom than whatever they can rob on the train. He doesn't figure the daughter's secret boyfriend being ready to do anything to ensure the safety of Tulika and her family, though.

All of this, of course, is little more than an excuse for Amrit to pummel assorted foes, and in Lakshya, the film has one of its best tools. The actor is charming as the romantic lead of the prologue, but as an action star, he's an embodiment of physical efficiency and, as those personal stakes become much more important to the character, mounting mercilessness.

There's a moment here when everything changes for Amrit. You can't miss it. For one thing, Bhat waits to reveal the title card until after it happens, which makes it read like an order for our protagonist, who apparently has been taking it easy on the bandits he encounters up until that point.

For another thing, the soundtrack includes the ticking of a digital timer just before Amrit takes the title's instruction to heart, as if a bomb goes off in his mind and demolishes any sense of fairness he might possess in a fight. A switch is flipped in Lakshya's performance, too, and the laser focus of his unthinking brutality would be terrifying, if not for the fact that it's understandable. It's still a bit scary, but that's the point.

The film is intriguing as an experiment in how much Bhat can pull off with his restricted setting, as Amrit, his partner, and a handful of braver passengers stand up to the bandits. Through the narrow corridors—just accommodating the bulkiest of the thieves' henchmen—and within the tight compartments of the train, Amrit and his allies punch and kick the bandits, who have assorted blades to keep stop any resistance. It becomes a bit repetitive, but once Amrit's goal changes after that one—admittedly, in the way it uses a particular character as plot device, questionable—event, the tone, momentum, and bloody creativity of the action shift.

Somehow, Bhat finds new ways to execute action we've already seen just minutes before, simply on account of the change in attitude and motivation. This is one of those actioners in which the sheer grisliness of the bloodletting is a key part of the mechanics, and it is shocking, as well as more-than-occasionally wince-inducing. The use of those blades on different facial orifices alone, slicing and carving and stabbing assorted features, is gruesome enough.

Even so, it's tough to deny the macabre creativity of that action, especially in how the filmmakers implement them within the restricted and restrictive setting. Plus, the sequences contain moments like Amrit flipping one bandit upside-down against a wall, sliding him downward, and slamming his head into a toilet. The fight choreography here is dynamic, despite and because of the backdrop, and, in those more ingenious moments, can be grimly amusing.

Kill doesn't set out to do much, except to justify wall-to-wall action—with those walls being much close than we're accustomed to in such projects. The film does exactly what it needs to do to execute that goal with skill and style.

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