Just how they went for the Kill!

Back in the midrsquo90s filmmaker Nikhil Nagesh Bhatmdasha Bihari of Maharashtrian ancestrymdashused to regularly take the lsquoBombay Juntarsquo Express from his hometown Patna to Pune where he was studying thenOn one such ldquo3640hour riderdquo Bhat found his train stranded at a desolate spot way off the scheduled Prayagraj in the morning Cops had entered the compartmentThe AC twotier coach nextdoor had got fully looted over the night Danapur Cantonment neighbours Patna which explains the number of soldiers on the train who regretted not having known about the burglaryThey wouldrsquove done something about it otherwiseBhat tells me this incident somehow remained stuck in his subconscious once he got down to script a pure actiongenre movie in 2016Director Nikhil Nagesh BhatAnd that somewhat equals Kill 2024 on RanchiDelhi Rajdhani Expressmdashprobably the only Indian allout actioner that as we speak has been picked up by John Wick director Chad Stahelski for a Hollywood remake with LionsgateThis is besides premiering with a lsquopeoplersquos choice awardrsquo at the 2023 Toronto film festivalrsquos muchloved Midnight Madness section along with a fairly wild festival run thereafter lsquoMidnightrsquo being filmfest euphemism for a temperamentally more publicfriendly lsquomasala moviesrsquo if you mayWell before its theatrical release July 5 I watched Kill with assorted lsquoBombay juntarsquomdashpotential exhibitors select fanboysgirlsmdashvisibly lighting up unabashedly clapping on occasion to the lethal gruesome bloodspluttering fest that hits a train on the sixth minute of the movie and carries on for its 100minute running time nonfrickinrsquostopInstantly I could tell you gotta watch this with a crowdmdashor donrsquot bother at all Whatrsquos it about action that seems to so draw us into the moviesCatharsis apart I guess itrsquos the same way we enjoy spectator sportmdashapart from the skill as a proxy for war that we hope none have to fight in real life IRL Also movieviolence is to physical skirmish what welllit erotica is to actual sex Too choreographed to be true Which is why I find parental arguments against its social impact rather overrated Even children can tell as they do with video games such pornographic action ainrsquot real too kiddish for them tooTake the robbery and retaliation scenes in Kill set entirely between train compartments Itrsquod be plain lsquobhassadrsquo pure pandemonium impossible to film if that many people were to fight it out in tiny passageways with hits and misses fists and sticksItrsquos to the technical credit of the production designer Mayur Sharma cinematographer Rafey Mehmood that Killer looks so killerObviously this is not the first movie on a moving train Take the Japanese Junya Satorsquos iconic tickingbomb Bullet Train 1975 slated for remake Of course it wouldrsquove kinda inspired the desi multistarrer The Burning Train 1980But more so the Hollywood blockbuster Speed 1994 Which is what if notmdashaccording to a line in the latest Netflix random romcom A Family AffairmdashldquoDie Hard on a busrdquo Couldnrsquot sit through the recent stilted Brad Pitt starrer Bullet Train 2022 thoughCompared to the unintentionally prescient Korean Yeon Sanghorsquos zombieapocalypse brilliance Train To Busan 2016 there are even fewer scenes of staged dialogues in Kill At best itrsquod be enough to fit four pages of a screenplay As per convention a page equals a minute I asked Bhat if my math matchesOn the contrary he laughs the script was way too lengthy and boring to read Because it contained every action movement down to its minutest detail ldquoIt became the BiblerdquoUsually action directors traditionally lsquofight mastersrsquo in India film their own stunt setpieces In a movie like Kill then Bhat would have nothing to doHe found a willingagreeable ally or Seoul mate I suppose in the Korean Seyeong Oh whorsquod also choreographed action for the Parasite director Bong Joon Horsquos Snowpiercer 2013Itrsquos similarly set on a train And one of Bhatrsquos admitted inspirations The other being James Cameronrsquos Aliens 1986mdashldquobecause both the alien and the astronaut in the movie had something vital to protect their young onerdquoBollywoodrsquos Parvez Shaikh Sultan Vikram Vedha got onboard too As it is Koreans have mastered the filmic fiction of bashing humans to pulpBloody Kill bravely produced by Guneet Monga and Karan Johar starring welltrained newcomers Lakshya Raghav Juyal could be described as a mixed martial arts MMA flick with raw streetfight meeting sophisticated mortal combatBhat says he made sure to properly cast for all the fighting roles Ashish Vidyarthi etc instead of blindly enrolling effective stuntmen ldquoThey had to emoterdquo Therersquos perennially someonesomething at stakeWhat I especially loved about Kill that gets progressively grimmer is the collectively subtle charactergraph of regular passengerblokes witnessing fatal madness on a trainAt some point when too much fear is employed by bullies you begin to stop fearing fear itself Something for tyrants to fear the mostAlmost as a rule of thumb I feel as deaths become cheap in a movie so does the price of the ticket For whatrsquos there to emotionally engage if everyone can die so easy anywayI suspect Bhat has pulled off a notable exception for Indian cinema in that regard What then holds the crucial key to Kill Consistency Always Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper