Kills on Wheels

Prov­ing that less able nev­er means less capa­ble, this dark com­e­dy from Hun­gar­i­an direc­tor Atti­la Tills’ offers a raw screen por­tray­al of dis­abil­i­ty. When two dis­abled teenagers form an unlike­ly alliance with a para­plegic hit­man, they final­ly find the adven­ture that they have long been craving.

Zoli (Zoltán Fenyvesi) is a wheel­chair user and Bar­ba (Adám Fekete) has a mild form of cere­bral pal­sy. The two are room­mates in a rehab cen­tre. Togeth­er they are pen­ning a com­ic book about a fire fight­er who became a para­plegic on the job. Fic­tion becomes fact when their cre­ation comes to life in the shape of Rupas­zov (Szabolcs Thuróczy), who has just been released from prison and finds him­self in the employ of the sketchy Ser­bian king­pin Rados (Dusan Vitanovic). Togeth­er with his keen new side­kicks, Rupas­zov under­takes the Serbian’s mur­der­ous assignments.

The trio are so effi­cient because no one sees them com­ing, even when exe­cut­ing vic­tims in pub­lic places they are able to slip away unno­ticed. The grave under­es­ti­ma­tion and almost invis­i­ble nature of peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties is revealed, as time and again the mot­ley wheel­chair bound team are able to roll away from the scene of the crime, entire­ly immune to suspicion.

The film blends moments of humour – such as Barba’s obses­sion with apply­ing deodor­ant (in case he meets some babes) – with the real­i­ties of a life on wheels. Atti­la address­es the impli­ca­tions of a being dif­fer­ent­ly abled, whether it is finan­cial trou­bles, emo­tion­al trau­ma or even the logis­tics of sex, treat­ing the pro­tag­o­nists as peo­ple rather than the sum total of their disabilities.

The com­ic book illus­tra­tions move seam­less­ly with­in the action becom­ing a prophe­cy of what is about to unfold, split­ting the film into chap­ters and remind­ing that the plot comes from the com­ic book and not the oth­er way around. While the cam­era angles are often from the point of view of a wheel­chair user, ensur­ing that not mat­ter how excit­ing the action, we do not for­get where the nar­ra­tive is com­ing from.