Kill is the brutal thriller that action die-hards can’t miss this summer
It’s been nice to see the growing popularity of Indian cinema in the States. For many people — especially those not familiar with the work of the legendary Satyajit Ray — their entry place was Aamir Khan’s excellent 2001 cricket drama Lagaan, the most recent Indian film to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. For others, it was S.S. Rajamouli’s RRR, the exuberant and maximalist epic anti-colonialist saga and the first Indian film by an Indian production to win an Academy Award.
Those movies aren’t very similar in their stylistic approach, but they do have a lot in common: action buoyed by romance, big musical numbers with lavish visuals, and strong anti-colonialist narratives. They — and many other recent successful Indian movie exports — contain elements of “masala film,” an approach that first appeared in the 1970s but remains strong today, in large part because of the work of Khan, Rajamouli, and others to reinvent the form and keep it alive. Masala movies are known for blending all sorts of genres together to create an experience that can appeal to as many moviegoers as possible. But not every Indian movie falls into the masala category, and the new hyper-violent Hindi action thriller Kill is here to prove that to U.S. audiences when it arrives in theaters on July 4.
After getting back from a long mission, Indian army commando Amrit (Lakshya) has received news from the love of his life (Tanya Maniktala) that she is being forced by her powerful father into an arranged marriage, and the wedding is tomorrow. Along with his friend and fellow commando (Raghav Juyal), he decides to try to stop it, secretly joining the wedding party on a train to Delhi. But when bandits attack, things go horribly wrong, and violence and mayhem ensue.
A tense thriller with terrific extended fight sequences, director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat made Kill with the intent of making a brutal action movie like The Raid, playing off a real-life experience he had with a
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