Kill review – a bumpy ride along par­al­lel tracks of hero­ism and villainy

Some way into Nikhil Nagesh Bhat’s Kill, Fani (Rughav Juyal) defends his mur­der­ous, mad-dog con­duct to his father Beni (Ashish Vid­yarthi), insist­ing that they are ban­dits, not Bat­man or Spi­der-Man, and not bound by codes of hon­our or responsibility.

Beni may have ordered Fani and his gang of thugs to rob all the pas­sen­gers on the Rajd­hani Express train, but the gra­tu­itous killing starts on Fani’s own ini­tia­tive. By chance, army com­man­does Amrit (Lak­shya) and Viresh (Abhishek Chauhan) are on the train too, try­ing to stop Amrit’s long-term girl­friend Tuli­ka (Tanya Manik­ta­la) being forced by her pow­er­ful fam­i­ly – also aboard – to mar­ry anoth­er man. The two sol­diers imme­di­ate­ly inter­vene in the armed rob­bery, and, like Bat­man, hurt and maim ban­dits but draw the line at wil­ful killing – until, about a third of the way through Kill, Fani him­self cross­es that line in a deeply per­son­al way, and the film’s title appears for the first time on screen, accu­rate­ly sig­nalling the vicious blood­bath to come.

Now Amrit too cross­es over, becom­ing a rag­ing, vin­dic­tive killer, even – some­thing which Fani express­ly states – a ​“mon­ster” not unlike Fani him­self, as Bhat treats audi­ences to a blud­geon­ing suc­ces­sion of nasty kills, coach by coach. Think of it as Gareth Evans’ The Raid on a train, with not just knives and guns as weapons, but what­ev­er comes to hand, includ­ing chains, cleavers, ham­mers, glass, lighter flu­id, even toi­lets. Soon the inte­ri­ors of these rail­cars will be less The Dar­jeel­ing Lim­it­ed than The Mid­night Meat Train, as Amrit’s ram­page of revenge turns car­riages into char­nel houses.

Like Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Van­ish­es, Euge­nio Martin’s Hor­ror Express, Jun’ya Satô Bul­let Train, Andrey Konchalovskiy’s Run­away Train, Tony Scott’s Unstop­pable, Bong Joon-ho’s Snow­piercer, Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan, and David Leitch’s Bul­let Train, Kill uses a high-speed loco­mo­tive as the vehi­cle for motion pic­ture thrills. In this case, a ​‘pro­tec­tor’ of the nation will have his hero­ic sta­tus not just test­ed but called into open ques­tion, as his own actions, along­side those of the ban­dits, esca­late the killings and rapid­ly raise the body count, so that both sides of this con­flict are caught in the same bar­relling deathtrap.

All these scenes of ram­i­fy­ing mas­sacre are incon­gru­ous­ly coun­ter­point­ed by moments of height­ened melo­dra­ma and sen­ti­men­tal flash­backs to hap­pi­er times, only adding to the film’s messy sense of moral dis­ori­en­ta­tion, where good and bad alike mourn their dead and are moti­vat­ed by the spi­ralling, self-beget­ting demands of vengeance.

Trains are rather like cin­e­mas. For their patrons, in des­ig­nat­ed seats with­in a con­fined space, are tak­en on a jour­ney with fixed times of depar­ture and arrival, and reward­ed with a win­dow on a world in con­stant motion on the oth­er side of the screen. In Kill, the train takes the view­er for a bumpy ride along par­al­lel tracks of hero­ism and vil­lainy. It is ecsta­t­i­cal­ly vio­lent, both cel­e­brat­ing and inter­ro­gat­ing its own killing spree, as it races towards its final destination.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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