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Kill is basically John Wick On A Train…
It’s also what I’d like to do to a couple of people in the audience, but I’ll get to that…
Army commando Amrit (Lakshya) and Tulika (Tanya Maniktala) are madly in love, yet her Dad, Baldeo Singh Thakur (Harsh Chhaya), who’s kind of a big deal in the travel industry – and whose name is referred to several times during the film, and in full, even though it doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue – has already arranged for her to be married to someone else.
Arranged marriage really is a fucking moronic practice, isn’t it?
Thankfully, these two also feel the same, and to save the day, he has to ensure he’s on her train, bound for New Delhi, so he can convince her family she should only marry him.
Meanwhile, some baddies start to get ready to take over the train, jamming mobile phone signals to stop anyone calling the cops, and everyone fears the leader, played by Raghav Juyal, even though his character’s name is Fani. What a big Fani!
Along the way, Armit’s friend Viresh (Abhishek Chauhan) gets kidnapped, although any situation in this film appears to last around five minutes before it’s all change, because it’s very fast-moving, and frequently has fight scenes involving knives, scythes, machetes, sledgehammers and fire!
And as it’s on a set of train carriages that are as badly built and aged like something from Northern Rail, it all takes place in a series of very tight spots, is brilliantly choreographed. Two of my favourites include one baddie getting a knife right in the eye, by chance, and another, purposely, having his head mashed in by a fire extinguisher.
There are a great number of fight sequences which take place, although these are interspersed by a fair few dialogue scenes, so you have time to get your breath back before it all kicks off again.
It’s interesting that both sides are travelling with extended family members, including the baddies – rather than just having them board the train in smart suits a la Die Hard, for example
At the time of watching Kill, I’d seen four Bollywood/Mollywood/etc films – including Turbo, all of which have an intermission, and only one actually clocking in at a reasonable running time of approximately two hours (Crew). For this film, there’s a moment that comes almost exactly halfway through where I expect some cinemas would be delivering an intermission if they had a print with the option – as you can feel a natural break coming, but for the version I saw, the film’s title simply appears onscreen, and for the first and only time, and it then just carries straight on.
Now, when are getting a sequel/follow-up?
But about the audience. The problem with going to the cinema a lot, as I use Odeon’s Limitless, and Cineworld’s Unlimited beforehand, is that I’m more often going to come across completely selfish pricks. In this case, I thought it would be the first two I came across, but no, it turned out to be what came next…
I booked the centre seat in the back of the two Premiere rows, and then just as I left the film beforehand, and was on to this, I’ve learned to check the seat map on the app, in case of any unexpected surprises. Oh dear… two other people had booked for that row… RIGHT NEXT TO ME!!! WTF is wrong with people? You’ve got plenty of space to spread out, given the days of Barbenheimer are long behind us, so use it!
Okay, the system stops you from leaving a gap of one person, so the answer is you leave a gap of two seats on the app, even if you leave one seat gap in reality… or just temporarily go to the website in another browser, select that seat and confirm and leave it, so it thinks the seat is allocated. Then book your seat – one seat away – and within 12 minutes, the ‘allocated’ seat will clear because you didn’t complete the unwanted transaction.
So, I moved my seat choice to two further away, just off-centre. I then headed off to the loo, but on my return, the evening got less tolerable. Since, never mind these two guys, behind us were now sat three lads, whose voices carried like a foghorn on a very loud wind.
I’ve been in auditoriums a few times, where a group of lads are waffling away, but as soon as the film starts, they keep schtum. I could tell that would not be the case this time, especially given how one of the three behind us was so embarrassed about his friends, that he actively got up and sat on the edge of that row.
Just before the film started, I moved to the centre of the Premiere row in front of me. I don’t normally like doing that when someone is in close proximity to me, just behind me, since I don’t like people being that close behind me, but (a) I figured those original two lads were now a lot less of a problem by comparison, and (b) I knew in this particular screen that the centre seat in that front Premiere row is missing, so I was technically two seats to the right from them.
However, despite several, periodic shushes, nothing would stop those bastards from gabbering away at NORMAL VOLUME as if they were in an episode of Gogglebox*. I know standards have severely dropped for some since the COVID19 pandemic, and some people just act like they’re in their own living room, but I did start to wonder if these lads had each done a line of cocaine beforehand, given how chatty they were.
I also wondered why wasn’t I hearing from any other audience members trying to get them to shut up? Or maybe they tried and were similarly ignored.
Of course, another option is to get up and look for a member of staff. For the screen I was in – down a long corridor – it was quite a long trek to find someone, and then wait for them to get a manager to come in and speak to these pricks, now two rows behind me, but I figured these two would’ve just continued on and on and on.
Plus, Kill has a lot of fight sequences, and when those come, it’s loud and drowns out the irritation. And if I’d gone to get someone, I would’ve missed some of that good stuff.
So, those were my choices. Had it been a different film where it was quieter more often, I would’ve gone to go find someone, but on balance, I stayed and hoped another loud scene was not far behind.
At least those arseholes will suffer the most, because they have to live with themselves 24/7.
I will certainly need to watch this again, but without those fucknuts jabbering away in the background, as well as try and block this experience from my mind.
(*For those outside the UK who are not aware of Gogglebox, it’s a Channel 4 partly-scripted reality show, where they pretend to make it look like they just set up a camera and film a family/group of friends spending the week watching a series of programmes in full, giving off-the-cuff reactions to them. However, Channel 4 just film them watching PARTS of programmes and feeding them lines to say and improvise around. Because they just want to make enough footage for a 45-minute programme, and not have a week’s worth of footage to edit down)
Kill is in cinemas now, but isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD. However, once announced, it will appear on the New DVD Blu-ray 3D and 4K releases UK list.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 105 minutes
Release date: July 5th 2024
Studio: Lionsgate Movies
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 (ARRIRAW)
Language: Hindi
Subtitles: English
Cinema: Odeon Trafford Centre
Rating: 7/10
Director: Nikhil Nagesh Bhat
Producers: Achin Jain, Hiroo Yash Johar, Karan Johar, Apoorva Mehta, Guneet Monga Kapoor
Screenplay: Nikhil Nagesh Bhat, Ayesha Syed
Music: Haroon-Gavin, Vikram Montrose, Shashwat Sachdev
Cast:
Amrit Rathod: Lakshya
Fani: Raghav Juyal
Tulika Singh: Tanya Maniktala
Viresh Chatwal: Abhishek Chauhan
Beni: Ashish G Vidyarthi
Virat: Pratap Verma
Baldeo Singh Thakur: Harsh Chhaya
Ahaana: Adrija Sinha
Tulika’s Mother: Meenal Kapoor
Jass’ Father: Mukesh Chandelia
Tulika’s Father: Madhu Raja
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.