Nikhil Nagesh Bhat's mind-blowing action film

Writer-director Nikhil Nagesh Bhats' single-location action film marks a very welcome indulgence for the time-tested film Die hard on a blank trope. The brutal action of this film is confined entirely to a moving train bound for New Delhi, with the setting effectively acting as a version of Die hardNakatomi Plaza, flipped on its side and propelled through the Indian countryside. And it's quite a ride.

Kill The film wastes absolutely no time getting its wheels in motion. The train literally leaves the station in just five minutes, carrying with it our dashing hero, Amrit (Lakshya), his beautiful bride-to-be, Tulika (Tanya Maniktala), and his loyal right-hand man, Viresh (Abhishek Cauhan). Barely five minutes have passed when a gang of bandits emerges from the crowd of passengers and begins violently stealing everything in sight.

It's an extremely clever set-up for a thriller. The robbery takes place over a two-hour period with no scheduled stops, and the bad guys have jammed the phones and cut the emergency brakes, so there's no chance of escape or anyone coming to the rescue. No one, that is, except the two reasonably pissed-off army commandos on Coach B1.

Amrit and Viresh quickly spring into action, delivering a rapid flurry of high kicks and spinning elbows that quickly leave the bandits wishing they had waited for the next train. The way Amrit transforms from the doe-eyed boy who looked so lovingly at Tulika to a sinister mountain of muscle and evil intent feels like a magic trick. His mustachioed friend also proves to have a far greater capacity for violence than his small stature and cozy sweaters would suggest.

The action is kinetic and chaotic, with bodies bouncing off seats, windows, floors, and ceilings. Bhat manages to capture the action with enough clarity that we always know what’s happening, while also immersing us in the panic of the moment. From one fall to the next, we can lose track of which end of the train is on and which direction the characters are moving, but we always know where the punch is coming from and who just got their jaw broken. And through it all, the action’s relentless energy is matched by a thunderous soundtrack that throws rock guitars, electronic beats, and guttural singing into the mix.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and Amrit continually finds new ways to turn the limited resources he has, from fire extinguishers to bed sheets, into deadly weapons. He and Viresh also take advantage of the many knives the bandits have brought on board, and the film is equally imaginative in how it uses them. In classic action-movie fashion, Kill also provides them with an unthinkably large man to face: a giant in a tracksuit named Siddhi (Parth Tiwari), whose punches look like they could shatter redwoods.

We always know exactly where Kill Is headed. The tracks are set when the suavely psychotic leader of the bandits, Fani (Raghav Juyal), first sets eyes on Tulika. It's clear that Amrit is going to have to fight his way through cartload after cartload of bad guys to save her, with his last stop most likely being a bloody showdown with Fani himself. But Kill consistently finds clever ways to defy our expectations through the particular placement of dramatic beats, surprising shifts in tone, and even the way it keeps reversing the geography of the action.

At a pivotal moment in the plot, which comes at the most unexpected time, Amrit is finally pushed too far. Up until this point, he and Viresh have been doing their best not to kill anyone while fighting the bandits, but now Armit is in full berserker mode, tearing apart each new opponent and striking pure terror into every viewer. Lakshya sells this beastly transformation with aplomb, and this more gruesome action is as inventively designed and clearly realized as the relatively milder version that preceded it.

It also highlights another clever little choice that Kill makes. The bandit clan is mostly made up of families, so every faceless goon Amrit eviscerates is also someone else's father, brother, or cousin on the train. The scenes that linger on their horrified reactions to the carnage Amrit leaves in his wake are skillfully handled, allowing the film to both revel in its visceral action and count the human costs of all those severed arteries. It's a cliché at this point to talk about violence and revenge in terms of cycles, but Kill essentially delivers this idea in the physical form of a locked box rolling around a set track, each hit resonating along its length, each kill making the world a little bloodier for everyone left behind.

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