In the Indian action film of cartoonish violence KillA gang of bandit train robbers face off against a single, unstoppable passenger. Throats are slit, fingers are crushed, knives, meat cleavers, hammers and fists are swung wildly. Bodies suffer unrealistic degrees of injury and continue to exact revenge. (Can a human being really be hit by a lead pipe?) that (I don’t know if I can get up multiple times and still get up?) The one-word title doesn’t actually appear onscreen until nearly 45 minutes in, serving as both a punctuation mark for the blood and bodily harm that writer-director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat has dished out so far, and a promise (to those of us who already guiltily enjoy this kind of thing) that things will only get more gratuitous and sadistic from here on out. A promise that, for the most part, Kill book with determination.
The film takes place almost entirely on an overnight train to New Delhi. The countryside passing by is a dark blur against a green screen. The bandits, led by the sociopath Fani (Raghav Juyal, best known in India as a professional dancer and reality TV contestant), initially hide among the passengers. Their plan is to rob four crowded sleeper cars and escape before the train reaches the next station. Regular passengers include wealthy businessman Baldeo Singh Thakur (Harsh Chhaya), his daughter, Tulika (Tanya Maniktala) and Tulika’s secret boyfriend, Amrit (the mononymous Lakshya), an elite counter-terrorism commando and exactly the kind of tough guy you’re not supposed to meet in these situations.
Amrit arrives with his best friend and comrade-in-arms, Viresh (Abhishek Chauhan), to convince Tulika to break off an arranged engagement and run away with him. The romance is unapologetic: when Amrit sneaks into a train toilet with Tulika to propose (counter-propose?), he opens a ring box that gleams like Marsellus Wallace’s briefcase while the music relies on the kind of sentimental acoustic guitar usually heard in US campaign ads and pharmaceutical commercials. Like the bloody action that follows, it’s more than a little ridiculous and over-the-top; a more charitable viewer might conclude that Bhat is attempting the same level of gratuitousness in a different genre key.
As the gang leader and family man, Beni (Ashish Vidyarthi), a middle-aged man, waits anxiously at the appointed meeting place, the bandits get to work. They lock the carriages, jam everyone’s phones with a gadget and start forcibly separating the passengers from their wallets and valuables. The whole thing turns into a bloody brawl (mostly Fani’s fault), and two passengers and a bandit end up dead. From there, the bodies pile up, giving each side increasingly gruesome motives for retaliation and revenge. The longer the fight goes on, the more the characters seem to regress to primitive urges. The sleeping carriages start to resemble a house of horrors.
HAS KillThe bandits, though they fit the stereotypes of classic thugs, are never treated as anonymous. They are revealed to be a large extended family: uncles, nephews, brothers and in-laws, who have personal reasons for continuing to try to kill the seemingly invincible Amrit. True, it is often unclear who is trying to avenge whom, but that only contributes to the film’s overall level of over-the-top melodrama, as does the often clumsy dialogue. (“This commando’s love fell on us like a bomb!” Fani says.) Even the facial expressions are cartoonish: glares, stares, snarls and teeth-grinding. Both the hero and villain end up with a lot of blood on their faces, but their hair remains salon-styled throughout the film.
A likely reference point here might be the cowboy-inspired, often kitsch dacoit genre – bandit movies, basically – that became a Bollywood staple from the 1970s onwards.Kill (even gives some nods to the Western influences of these early bandit films.) Another, even more obvious group of references would be the ultra-violence of Indonesian action films like Lowering, The Raid 2And The night comes for usas well as American classics from the 80s. Sylvester Stallone’s brooding Rambo gets a mention, but Amrit is very much a hero in the mold of the brilliant, headstrong Schwarzeneggerian killing machine. He even gets the requisite beefy camera angles, but sadly, not the corny one-liners.
There is something here that suggests men becoming monsters, righteous targets, etc., but the symbolism is unfinished; the violence, however stylized, never stands for anything more than itself. Fortunately, Bhat proves himself a director capable of close-up action—the stabbing, kicking, punching, lunging, punching and strangling choreographed in the cramped, rickety interior of the train. The soundtrack pulses with thumps, grunts, thuds, slashes and cracks as bodies are hammered between bunks and inside vestibules, through bunk curtains, against bunks, light fixtures and slamming doors. At one point, Amrit bashes an unlucky bandit’s skull with a fire extinguisher until his head is pulverized into a sticky homogenate resembling a canned tomato.
As savage and bloody as it is, the mayhem never feels claustrophobic, even though it almost certainly should. In fact, the film’s greatest flaw isn’t its lack of measurable depth, but its lack of spatial tension. As adept as he is at staging fast-paced fights, Bhat doesn’t show much eye for the basics of suspense: It’s hard to tell which train car we’re in or how far away one group of characters might be from another. The layout, timing, and distance are too vague to create a palpable sense of danger. As a result, KillThe dynamics of is explained only by the way it constantly tries to outdo itself, inventing new, cruder and more sadistic ways to maim and kill with its limited means. Fans of fast and violent action will have a good time, but shouldn’t expect much more.