Kill (2024)

I'd been looking forward to this one for a while - an Indian film that draws comparisons with The Raid wasn't something I ever expected to see, but that's what we have here.

Like The Raid, Kill is a remarkably tight action film, with a straightforward and minimal setup that serves as the pad from which an escalating series of confrontations are launched, starting with a set of precise and efficient takedowns that lead to a series of reprisals that become increasingly desparate and brutal as people become injured, tired, angry and/or terrified.

The location is used well, the narrow corridors of the moving train turning from hiding places into traps into hunting grounds into a slaughterhouse as getting off the train alive starts to seem ever less plausible for both sides. The pristine, ordered environment becomes increasingly messy, dirty and claustrophobic as its occupants become increasingly feral.

The film does a surprisingly good job of showing the situation from both sides, with the extended family of bandits being more than just a numberless set of disposable thugs that a righteous hero can erase from the world without a thought. They have their own factions, and their deaths are mourned.

Making a (very) violent action movie to say that violence is bad could be a case of wanting to have one's cake and eat it, but the film actually remains quite neutral - the protagonist is ultimately neither celebrated nor condemned, really. It acknowledges the fact he has been responsible for a lot of death and trauma, at least some of which could probably have been avoided, in a way that action films rarely do.

The action is very well staged and filmed, making good use of the mechanics of bodies and the opportunities and obstacles provided by the environment.

Lead actor Lakshya does a great job and I look forward to seeing more of him - especially if he stays with interesting, ambiguous roles like this rather than the usual macho hero types.

Yeah, I liked this film a lot. It definitely feels like a landmark in Indian cinema, and it will be interesting to see if it remains an unusual outlier or opens new cinematic territory.