Explosive
Summary
Kill is one of the year’s best action movies with a massive bodycount, regular brutal fight scenes and yet still manages to have an emotional core to the story and characters.
Plot: A train to New Delhi becomes a combat battleground as a pair of commandos faces off against an army of invading bandits.
Review: When your movie is called Kill it’s a safe bet that there is going to be a high bodycount and this movie delivers that in spades. This is one of the most violent action movies I’ve seen in years and is essentially India’s answer to The Raid. It spends about 5-10 minutes setting up the characters and then the rest of the movie is absolute carnage. It still manages to have some heart and even has some genuinely emotional and shocking moments.
In Kill our hero Amrit Rathod (Lakshya) is a Commando who boards a train to Delhi to be with his fiancé; what he wasn’t expecting is a group of bandits take over and hold everyone hostage. Amrit and his partner Viresh start to take them down in various violent ways and a lot (and I mean a lot) of blood is spilled.
I love when Amrit is first introduced the heroic music swells, and it’s the kind of thing we don’t really see in American movies anymore.
The main villain Fani (Raghav Juyal) is one of the year’s best as he’s a sadistic, smug and hateful monster. He has no redeeming features, and you can’t wait until Amrit gives him the comeuppance he deserves.
One thing you don’t normally see in American movies is the villains crying when their comrades are killed; I’ve never seen bad guys cry so much as they did in this movie. I liked it though as it made them feel more human rather than cartoonish.
The fight scenes are fantastic, and we go maybe 10 minutes of the entire hour and 45 minutes where no one is fighting. It’s incredibly well paced with some imaginative kills and at times it’s just plain sadistic.
I didn’t really have much of an idea what to expect going in, but at times I was blown away by the fights and this is now in my top action movies of 2024. It doesn’t leave you with much by the end and you’ll be emotionally exhausted, but it still it left an impression on me, so I’ll be picking it up on 4K if and when it comes out.
Overall, Kill is a brutally entertaining ride with a bodycount surely in the triple digits and it will make you question whether taking the train is such a good idea in the future. I was pleased our cinema was quite busy and people were supporting R rated action, so not everyone was there to see Despicable Me 4. I hear and American remake is in the works, but it’s not really necessary and likely won’t improve anything.