Complaining about the gratuitous violence in ‘Kill’ is futile, as the film is essentially a series of scenes drenched in unprecedented blood and gore for Hindi cinema. It’s an unrestrained, brutally intense film that adheres to genre conventions from start to finish, with relentless sequences of slashing, banging, and thudding on repeat.
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Desi ‘Kill’ Brings Unique Twist to Genre, Balancing Patriotism and High-Intensity Action
The one line story– two commandos up against a bunch of bandits who invade a train going from Ranchi to Delhi — is an excuse for the action director and the fight choreographer to conjure up the many ways to kill a man. And, yes, a woman.
Those who are fans of genre movies, and have been watching the South Koreans show us how it is done (‘Train To Busan’, ‘Snowpiercer’), will find the desi ‘Kill’ derivative. But that will be ignoring how much this Nikhil Nagesh Bhat’s fast-and-furious tale is its creature, which takes care to surround us with familiar elements, even when ratcheting the kill quotient as high as it can go: the good guys are patriotic Army commandos, the bad guys are modern day versions of the good ol’ dakus, there is romance in the air, the young lovers stealing moments in the crowd, and the overweight cops, as always, bring up the rear.
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Will Viewers Cringe or Cheer?
A film which calls itself ‘Kill’ allows for no nuance. We know, going in, that there will be blood. The question is: just how ‘palatable’ is this ‘maar-dhhad’? Will it make us wince in horror, and close our eyes against the relentlessness of it all? Or will it become a spectator sport, where we, the viewers, will cheer on the good fellas, willing them to smash the baddies to pulp?
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There’s also an excuse for all the carnage in the slender storyline which has just enough weight to carry all this slashing-and-shooting: one of the commandos, Amrit (Lakshya) is in love with Tulika (Tanya Maniktala), who is on the train with her heavy dad Thakur Baldev Singh (Harsh Chhaya) and younger sister (Adrija Sinha); the other, Viresh (Abhishek Chauhan), equally skilled in weaponery and single-hand combat, is also busy fulfilling that old Bollywood trope, as the hero’s best friend.
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