In my limited experience with Indian cinema (namely last year’s fantastic RRR and Shah Rukh Khan’s two highly entertaining 2023 releases Jawan and Pathaan), I have already gained a love for the over-the-top action and sincere melodrama that generally occurs in the action genre. KILL is remarkably different from those other films. The melodrama is still very present, but instead of musical numbers, it’s replaced with some of the grittiest and grimiest action I’ve seen all year.
Amrit (Lakshya) is an Army Commando in love with the beautiful Tulika (Tania Maniktala). Despite Tulika being set for an arranged marriage with another man, Amrit, alongside his best friend Viresh (Abhishek Chauhan), board a commercial train carrying Tulika’s rich family and the couple plot to run away and together once they arrive in New Delhi. Unfortunately, partway through the trip, a horde of bandits board the train and begin robbing and threatening all the passengers on board. It’s up to the two commandos to take down the criminals and protect Tulika, her family and the rest of the train’s passengers.
Based on the initial hype about the level of violence in the film, the first 40 minutes of KILL feel strangely restrained but in a way that narratively makes sense. The first action scenes focus on Amrit and Viresh subduing bandits and prioritizing the safety of the civilians on board.
However, after those 40 minutes, a shocking incident happens, triggering one of the best mid-movie title card drops I’ve ever seen and setting the stage for the relentless carnage that would take place for the rest of its nearly 2-hour runtime. I don’t want to spoil too much because it’s legitimately a sight to behold as Amrit tears through this gang of bandits with anything he can get his hands on, like Jason tears through camp counsellors.
“Based on the initial hype about the level of violence in the film, the first 40 minutes of KILL feel strangely restrained, but in a way that narratively makes sense.”
Director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat does a great job using the train’s limited space to capture some impressively brutal fight scenes, courtesy of choreographers Parvez Shaikh and Se-yeong Oh. It’s easy and valid to make the comparison to The Raid, but I would say KILL leans closer to the hyper-violent and highly underrated splatter flick The Night Comes For Us.
Just like The Raid turned Iko Uwais into a martial arts superstar, I suspect KILL will do the same for lead actor Lakshya, which is even more impressive considering this is his debut role. While he and Tania Maniktala don’t share that much screen time together, the melodrama works because of the great chemistry between the pair.
You buy that this is a couple that would do anything just to be together. A little of it borders on the ridiculous, but it’s also a nice respite from the blood and guts. KILL also has a great foil in its lead villain, Fani, thanks to a live-wire performance by Raghav Juyal. The film does everything in its power to make you despise Fani, and it succeeds in spades. That being said, the movie surprisingly makes you feel some sympathy for the group of bandits as well.
“There’s so much action going on in KILL. It threatens to be completely exhausting before it hits the end.”
There are moments where the bandits mourn and cry for their fallen comrades, several of them being each other’s family members. Fani’s greed and callousness are knowingly leading them to their doom, but they stay because they’re too far gone to turn back. It’s an interesting shift in tone that doesn’t fully pay off as well as it should at the VERY end of the film, but it’s something that did leave me with a bit to think about afterwards.
There’s so much action going on in KILL. It threatens to be completely exhausting before it hits the end. If it had the length of other standard Indian films (where runtimes regularly go around the 2-and-a-half to 3-hour mark), it probably would have, but its 115-minute length makes it feel refreshingly brisk. KILL is one of the best action films of the year, and action fans need to keep this one on their radar.
