The best action film of the year

Kill lives up to its title, delivering a virtually unrelenting spectacle of brutal, bloody, bone-crushing violence. I breathed a sigh of relief as the credits rolled and my heart rate returned to normal. Make no mistake, Kill is an emotionally charged and stirring film that is a real treat for action fans, but not for the faint of heart.

Writer-director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat knows what he’s doing from start to finish, taking the audience on a rollercoaster ride of brutal vengeance. Towards the end of the film, I saw our hero kill a man in a way I’d never seen an action hero kill anyone before, a way that made me uncontrollably exclaim, “Oh my God! Oh my God!” and put my hand to my forehead in disbelief when I saw what I was seeing.

But the film begins as a love story! We meet army soldiers Amrit and Viresh as they return from an unspecified mission, and Amrit learns that his girlfriend Tulika has become engaged to someone else at her father’s request. He wants to kidnap her immediately, but she is afraid to defy her powerful father. This is not an uncommon plot in Bollywood films, but Bhat foregoes saccharine sentimentality in favor of genuine cuteness. Thanks to the endearing performances of Lakshya and Tanya Maniktala, we quickly root for this couple in love.

Likewise, we buy the camaraderie between Amrit and Viresh (Abhishek Chauhan), whom the subtitles repeatedly address as “brother” to emphasize that they are brothers, even though Amrit simply calls him affectionately by his name. Establishing who is important to Amrit – and who is important to them – is important, as he is about to embark on the worst train ride of his life.

Amrit just wants to take a big romantic break while his girlfriend and her family travel to Delhi to visit her fiancé. Unbeknownst to him, but known to all of us, a gang of thieves is planning to rob this train. Bhat builds up the suspense before the robbery takes place, and when it does, Amrit and Viresh spring into action to protect their fellow passengers. They are soldiers! It’s their duty! And they’re good at violence. They fight well as a two-man army, and the action scenes are pretty cool, though they don’t seem worthy of the hype the film has gotten.

In the first few scenes of the film, I casually noticed that I hadn’t seen the title yet, but I forgot about it as I got into the action. I don’t know if anything can top that. Hundreds of beavers for Best Late Title Card Drop of 2024, but Kill is a very strong play for that award, because damn. When Bhat puts in that title card, it’s more than the name of the film, it’s a burning command, a four-letter summary of what you want to see Amrit do A LOT for the rest of the film, and HE DOES IT.

Because it turns out you haven’t seen the movie. You’ve seen the prologue of the movie. Suddenly the plot goes from 8 to 28, when Amrit goes from being a badass soldier to a DEMON FROM HELL. (I had already described him that way in my head before I got to the part where HE SHOWED HIS KILLS LIKE JASON FUCKING VOORHEES.)

Indian films are designed to have intermissions to create a break in the narrative and when done well, they can provide a uniquely thrilling experience that Western cinema cannot. I always love seeing a film end on its intermission, after which there is supposed to be a break to allow the audience to process and reflect on the events and recharge for the second half of the film, which usually goes in a new direction but carries with it all the emotional weight of the first half. In Killthis late title interjection repeats the pause but offers absolutely no respite as it charges into murderous chaos, driven by the emotional heaviness of the first half. It’s a brilliant subversion of traditional narrative structure.

In the rest of the film, Bhat takes inspiration from Korean revenge thrillers and Indonesian action films, as Amrit runs amok on that train, and my heart didn’t stop beating for an hour. Action directors Se-yeong Oh – who has worked on several of Park Chan-wook’s films, including the train set Snowpiercer— and Parvez Sheikh, who choreographed the ridiculously entertaining action in War And Tigers 3ramp up the intensity and give Lakshya, the rest of the cast and the stunt team a series of hand-to-hand combat situations where they have to fight with knives, fire extinguishers, toilets, knives, curtains, fists, knives and knives. Did I say knives? There’s a lot of stabbing in this film. And Amrit loves to stuff things in people’s mouths, which always filled me with joy. There’s a lot of beating too. On both sides, to be clear! Amrit gets beat up in this film; he’s not an invincible action hero.

This film made me cringe several times because the violence was so wonderfully over the top. Bhat may twist the knife emotionally, but Amrit does it literally. Cinematographer Rafey Mehmood films these fights in a very claustrophobic way, emphasizing how little room to move is available to them, and despite his name, editor Shivkumar V. Panicker cuts them precisely, choosing a variety of angles to keep us in tight confines while showing us each blow. While it would have been impressive if they could have used longer shots –The Raid 2 For example, the fluid camerawork during the fight in the prison bathroom was achieved by building a bathroom set with removable walls. I liked what they were able to do with the physical limitations of filming in that space, and the editing certainly doesn’t take away from the impact of the violence.

On the other hand, I found the layout of the train cars confusing. Although the film clearly explains the four specific cars where the action takes place and makes sure you can see the car designation in the background, I gradually lost track of who was in which car, even though I thought I had a handle on the order of the cars and knew when people moved from car to car. Some people make it to the roof of the train, but I could swear that sometimes people just teleported into other cars.

It may have been a conscious decision to cast similar-looking actors for the bandits’ patriarchs and Tulika’s family and then dress them similarly, but it made it difficult to immediately tell which carriage we were in, especially since they were usually on opposite sides of the train. Fortunately, this confusion didn’t lead to critical problems in understanding what was happening, as the action moved along quickly enough that no one stayed in the same place for too long.

What really matters Kill What sets this film apart from so many other action films, its train setting and ultra-violence, is the way it treats its antagonists. In most action films, the action hero mows down nameless henchmen and we feel nothing of their deaths. Here, however, the forty-something thieves on board this train are all FAMILY. That’s true, if this is a Fast and Furious In the film, they would be the heroes! However, they are literally family, as extended families are much closer in Indian culture than in American culture, which makes me very curious to see how the American remake will handle this very important aspect of the film.

Every person Amrit kills is someone’s father, uncle or brother, and the bandits express genuine anguish over their deaths. There is an uncomfortable tension in our emotional response, as they are clearly the bad guys… but we feel sorry for them? The film certainly revels in the brutality of its violence and wants to entertain the audience. It gives us what we want, but it also makes us feel guilty for wanting that violence to happen to someone.

When the bandit leader Fani (Raghav Juyal, who is a great sociopath) calls Amrit a rakshasa for saying, “An eye for an eye? No, how about ten eyes for an eye,” he has a valid point, although I’m not sure the film is definitely condemning him for his actions, but wants to have it on both sides, portraying his anger as righteous and dangerous. It’s hard for us to know what to feel, too, because even though many more bad guys die than good guys, the losses on the good side hurt like hell.

Kill takes the audience on a hellish journey, and versatile composer Shashwat Sachdev adapts to the changing tones and moods throughout the film with varied instrumentation. Whether it’s the soaring orchestra of the languishing romance, the pulsing electronic beats and gunfire of the hard-hitting action, or the sweeping strings of the moral tragedy, Sachdev’s sound palette complements what’s on screen beautifully. Bhat and his team have created a tremendously good, bad time here, and it’s going to be hard to beat this film as the best action movie of the year.