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9th July 2024
05:42pm BST
2024 has not been a bad year so far for action movie fans thanks to the likes of Civil War, The Fall Guy, Furiosa and Land of Bad.
It must be said though, all of these pale in terms of action to Kill - a new thriller from India that earned a quiet cinema release last weekend.
The release was so quiet in fact that this writer did not even realise at first that the film was available to watch. And when I ended up going to the cinema to see it, the only people in the theatre were myself and one other stranger.
Kill tells the story of an army commando named Amrit (played by Lakshya) who finds out his true love Tulika (Tanya Maniktala) has become engaged against her will.
As such, he boards a New Delhi-bound train in a daring quest to stop the arranged marriage and rescue her.
However, when a gang of murderous bandits - led by the ruthless Fani (a brilliantly hateable Raghav Juyal) - begin terrorising the train's passengers, Amrit fights back in an effort to save Tulika, her family and the others on-board.
While Kill begins standardly enough, feeling almost like Die Hard on a train, a shocking moment about half-way through cements the movie as a completely different beast altogether.
It's only then that we get the title card drop (always a baller move) and the film ratchets up the violence all the way to 11 as Amrit goes completely berserk in his efforts to mow down Fani and his cronies.
Writer-director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat, meanwhile, uses the tight confines of the train's carriages to his advantage to make every fight feel up-and-close and personal, as well as bone-crunchingly visceral.
On that point, it isn't just guns, knives and fists doling out all the violence, as anything you could reasonably find on a train - blankets, chains, fire extinguishers, toilets and lighters - is turned into a weapon of mass destruction.
All that being said though, Kill actually does also have some deeper themes about the cyclical nature of violence - exploring the ideas behind that old quote: "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves."
When my screening of the film ended, the other person in the theatre walked past me and said: "That was savage, wasn't it?" He was 100% correct.
And after coming home from the cinema, it did not surprise me to learn when reading up about Kill that a US remake is in the works that is set to be produced by John Wick director Chad Stahelski.
This remake, however, would need to be something very good indeed to even just be in the same ballpark as the original Kill.
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