Kill: non-stop crowdpleasing carnage

An hour into Nikhil Nagesh Bhat’s film, the title finally appears onscreen – just after a major traumatic event. Hero Amrit (Lakshya) takes a leap in his character arc and Kill segues from reasonably realistic crime movie into a vigilante wish-fulfilment fantasy.

In essence, the pitch is ‘Die Hard on a train’ – which was done in the middling Steven Seagal sequel Under Siege 2 (1995) – though its non-stop fight-through-a-horde-of-bad-guys choreography owes more to a modern era of action cinema defined by the Raid movies or the John Wick series. Way back in From Russia With Love (1963), the James Bond series devised a variant on the one-on-one slugfest climaxes of so many thriller and western films by having Bond (Sean Connery) and his nemesis Red (Robert Shaw) conduct a brutal fight in the confines of a railway compartment rather than the comparative expanse of, say, an abandoned warehouse. The second half of Kill is a series of variations on that From Russia With Love fight, taking place in a long, narrow stretch between the bunks of a cramped Indian sleeper train, with a few obligatory breaks for clinging to the roof or dangling out of doorways.

The first half isn’t exactly slower, but basic relationships have to be established before the real action can start. Commando Amrit is secretly engaged to Tulika (Tanya Maniktala), a tycoon’s daughter who is being pushed into an arranged marriage, while flamboyantly evil young bandit Fani (Raghav Juyal) is impatient with his hypocritical father’s modest ‘family values’ banditry. 

The gang board the train intent on relatively petty crime – stealing cash and valuables from passengers. They only have one gun and even that misfires. But when he finds Tulika’s father, railway magnate Thakur (Harsh Chhaya), Fani is tempted by a possible ransom. At first, Amrit reacts proportionately, thumping but not killing, until a line is crossed. This unfortunately leads to a narrative device that has long since become so tiresome there are internet sites listing instances of it (keyword: fridging). 

After the title, Kill delivers non-stop spectacular carnage in an undeniably crowd-pleasing manner with Lakshya presenting as an iconic superstar (bare-chested but wounded) as he breaks, batters and stabs all comers.

It’s hard not to feel the worst person in the film has a point when he whines that his bandits have only killed four passengers while professional killer Amrit has gleefully slaughtered ‘forty members of my family’. Kill is an exercise in justifiable homicide on an industrial scale, a broad strokes melodrama done with flair – but it’s a throwback in most of its assumptions about goodies and baddies.

► Kill is in cinemas from 5 July.