‘Kill’ movie review: Lakshya launches a bloody battle

Things have finally changed in the action department of Dharma Productions. A few months ago they gave us Warriorin which Sidharth Malhotra beats up hijackers on a shaking plane. In comparison, his latest, Strikewhich stars newcomer Lakshya in the lead role, is a more grounded effort: 105 minutes of brawling on a moving train. If the film turns a profit and a sequel is announced – an English-language remake is already in the works – I would strongly advise the makers to cut it down, not expand it. kill 2 Ideally this incident should have taken place on an autorickshaw in the Mumbai rains, a real bloodbath.

Director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat has cut more fat than he thought possible from Dharma’s screenplay; Sikhya Entertainment, a very modern banner with an international outlook, is his co-producer of the film and that probably had a countervailing effect. NSG commando Amrit (Lakshya) is relaxing from a recent assignment when a new crisis arises: his girlfriend, Tulika (Tanya Maniktala), is getting engaged to someone else. The couple has been fixed, against her wishes, at the behest of Tulika’s rich, influential father (Harsh Chhaya). With just a day left, Amrit, a quick, relentless man of action, comes to Ranchi to get Tulika out of the ceremony. She refuses – “Cancel the mission,” Amrit quickly alerts his fellow Army man, Veeresh (Abhishek Chauhan).

The next day, Tulika and her family board a night train to Delhi. Amrit stays with them during the journey, proposing to his girlfriend in the washroom (“The commode smells nice”) and then moves into a separate coach with Veeresh. Also aboard is a gang of robbers, led by the lascivious, mentally ill Phani (Raghav Juyal). They seal four coaches and turn off the signals – this way, the train moves forward unhindered and they scare and rob the passengers. All this takes about 15 minutes. Then a fight begins.

Once Strike Once the action is underway, the action is explosive. This is one of the most dangerous Hindi action films to hit theaters in a long time. The action is fast, frenetic, inspiring and all the other adjectives you can apply to a Bollywood film with raw fight choreography and blatant CGI. The sealed compartments of an Indian passenger train become the perfect sandbox for blood-soaked mayhem. Action directors Se-Yong Oh and Parvez Sheikh have worked on elaborate productions – war, tiger 3 — but they’re no less inventive in these tight spaces (Se-yong actually did the Korean unit stunts Snowpiercer) The curtains of an AC sleeper coach have been repurposed as death traps; there’s a constant flow of clever seductions; and it’s rare to see a Hindi action film that relies almost entirely on melee attacks (the robbers keep a tasty stock of curved knives).

Strike Premiering in the Midnight Madness section at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2023. The promo suggested Indian die Hard In Train, however, Bhatt – directing his first true-blue action film – re-imagines this primary setup as a neo-Western. For instance, it soon emerges that the thieves are blood relatives; grief flows on both sides, turning the drama into a sinister waltz of revenge. Ketan Sodha’s music has a clear Western inflection. I also loved how Phani keeps shouting Tulika’s father’s full name – “Baldev Singh Thakur” – as if marking his enemy in a 1960s bandit film.

Touted as Hindi cinema’s new ‘killing machine’, Lakshya is sweaty, strong and seething. The young actor eschews the athleticism of a Tiger Shroff or Vidyut Jammwal, opting instead for a more focused, frictional fighting style. What he lacks, perhaps, is dialogue skills: no “yippee-ki-yay, motherf***” or “I’ve come to chew bubblegum and kick ass”, just lots of grunts and short phrases. The jokes mostly come from Juyal, who is hilariously loose-lipped and greedy as the wild-eyed Phani.

As the enraged Amrit roams around on this train of death, beheading people, ripping out their brains and setting their heads on fire, one wonders if Strike This is the kind of recruitment ad the armed forces would expect from Bollywood. It is a very bloody genre piece, carefully satisfying its own (and the audience’s) bloodlust. In a funny coincidence, Strike is being issuedIt’s the 20th year of Farhan Akhtar’s second film, which presented the soldier’s story as a gentle coming of age. But that was 2004: a different era, a different goal.