Kill: Adrenaline filled bloodbath

First things first: if you are faint-hearted, 'Kill'  is definitely not going to be your cup of tea. Don't watch it even out of curiosity. But if you have the stomach for gore, mayhem, and a bloodfest, you are in for a (train) ride. It's going to be tense, gripping, full of family drama, combat, and of course, killings—a lot of it—and it's just satisfying.

The beginning is fast-paced. The director, Nikhil Nagesh Bhat, takes only five minutes to lay the context and develop the characters—two army commando friends who have just returned from a ten-day operation, only to learn that the love of the protagonist, Amrit, played by debutante Lakshya, is getting engaged to someone else in Ranchi.

The marriage has been set by the powerful and wealthy father of the heroine, Tulka (Tanya Maniktala), against her will. So our hero, with his best man, heads there to whisk her away from the event. Calculating the risk, she refuses to go with them, and they "abort the mission," vowing to reunite in Delhi and elope to a safer place.

On the way back home, the heroine and her family board a train bound for Delhi. So do the heroes.

The movie quickly shifts gears and turns the colour red. What could have been a surprise for Tulka and a sneaky love ride turns tense when a "happy family" of 40 people prepares for "chicken chowmein" on a WhatsApp conversation, indicating that family members have boarded different compartments of the train. But what they really mean is that they are a group of ruthless bandits ready for their operation.

Twelve minutes into the movie, the intriguing background score makes you feel that something is not right. It's not just a regular train robbery. Right at that moment, all hell breaks loose, with Fanni, extraordinarily played by Raghav Juyal, brandishing a machete in the middle of the head of the train's guard. They place network jammers so no one can contact the outside.

Near the end, two characters watch a bloodbath unfold through a door between compartments, mirroring the audience's reactions. They get angry when the hero is hit and their expressions rejuvenate when he rises again. The slick action scenes are so well-choreographed and delivered that they will move your limbs as if you were fighting through the screen. The violence is both visceral and unflinching, a feast for the audience's bloodlust.

Interestingly, unlike most action films, no death goes unnoticed. It's not just one big villain in the crosshairs along with some disposable goons. The long-standing villain, Fanni, with his unbending attitude, is a formidable match for the unstoppable, highly trained commando hero. Each character is given at least a steady frame, as the group of bandits operates as a family, not hired mercenaries. Every death is significant, and the graphic details of the killings are not concealed by camera angles, let alone blurred.

For an action movie, the emotional development is not overlooked. Emotion and action are intertwined seamlessly. The brief yet poignant scenes teemed with intense conversations, promises, love, affection, and plans for the future are given enough human depth.

As the story unfolds and the train glides ahead, the director slowly unleashes the beast within the hero, who kills so brutally, even though some scenes seemed exaggerated given that he was always greatly outnumbered. This leads to the second most bloodthirsty killer in the movie asking him with fear in his eyes, "Who kills this way, man?"

The mind games are outfoxed, the floor gets blood-soaked and the entire train becomes a bloodied death ring. What starts as a robbery turns into a game of survival. The only improvement to strengthen the story would be to have the dacoits use their last bait, the heroine's younger sister, more effectively.

With recent Bollywood movies like Jawan, KGF, Yodha, and Fighter taking fight scenes to a different scale, this one redefines fight choreography in a condensed space—literally within a train compartment.

Fourteen minutes into the film, four subsequent coaches of a moving train are sealed off. Shutters down. Networks jammed. An unhinged and emotionally charged fighter against a ferocious league of bandits. Two hours to the next station. One and a half hours left in the movie and a lot of killing to do. Enjoy the bloodbath.