<img style="float: left;" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2024/jul/Mayank-Shekhar-op_e.jpg" alt="Mayank Shekhar" width="150" height="83" />Back in the mid-&rsquo;90s, filmmaker Nikhil Nagesh Bhat&mdash;a Bihari, of <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/news/opinion/article/so-what-if-maharaj-is-maha-bore-23357149" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">Maharashtrian ancestry</a>&mdash;used to regularly take the &lsquo;Bombay Junta&rsquo; Express, from his hometown, Patna, to Pune, where he was studying, then.&nbsp;
On one such &ldquo;36-40-hour ride&rdquo;, Bhat found his train stranded at a desolate spot, way off the scheduled Prayagraj, in the morning. Cops had entered the compartment.&nbsp;
The AC two-tier coach, next-door, had got fully looted, over the night. <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/news/opinion/article/whats-hrithik-roshan-presented-23354770" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">Danapur Cantonment</a> neighbours Patna, which explains the number of soldiers on the train, who regretted not having known about the burglary.&nbsp;
They would&rsquo;ve done something about it, otherwise!
Bhat tells me this incident somehow remained stuck in his subconscious, once he got down to script a pure, action-genre movie, in 2016.
<img src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2024/jul/Nikhil-Bhat_e.jpg" alt="Director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat" width="1280" height="720" /> Director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat
And that somewhat equals Kill (2024), on Ranchi-Delhi, <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/news/opinion/article/why-dev-scares-indian-censors-23352731" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">Rajdhani Express</a>&mdash;probably the only Indian, all-out actioner that, as we speak, has been picked up by John Wick director, Chad Stahelski, for a Hollywood remake, with Lionsgate.&nbsp;
This is besides premiering with a &lsquo;people&rsquo;s choice award&rsquo; at the 2023 Toronto film festival&rsquo;s much-loved Midnight Madness section, along with a fairly wild festival run, thereafter. &lsquo;Midnight&rsquo; being film-fest euphemism for a temperamentally more public-friendly, &lsquo;masala movies&rsquo;, if you may.
Well before its theatrical release (July 5), I watched Kill with assorted &lsquo;<a href="https://www.mid-day.com/news/opinion/article/life-is-short-have-an-affair-huh-23351658" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">Bombay junta</a>&rsquo;&mdash;potential exhibitors, select fanboys/girls&mdash;visibly lighting up, unabashedly clapping, on occasion, to the lethal, gruesome, blood-spluttering fest, that hits a train, on the sixth minute of the movie, and carries on for its 100-minute running time; non-frickin&rsquo;-stop!&nbsp;
Instantly, I could tell, you gotta watch this with a crowd&mdash;or don&rsquo;t bother, at all. What&rsquo;s it about action that seems to so draw us into the movies?&nbsp;
Catharsis apart, I guess, it&rsquo;s the same way we enjoy spectator sport&mdash;apart from the skill, as a proxy for war, that we hope none have to fight, in real life (IRL)! &nbsp;
Also, movie-violence is to physical skirmish, what well-lit 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 ain&rsquo;t real; too kiddish for them too!
Take the robbery and retaliation scenes in Kill, set entirely between train compartments. It&rsquo;d be plain &lsquo;bhassad&rsquo; (pure pandemonium), impossible to film, if that many people were to fight it out in tiny passageways, with hits and misses, fists and sticks.&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s to the technical credit of the production designer (Mayur Sharma), cinematographer (Rafey Mehmood), that Killer looks so killer!&nbsp;
Obviously, this is not the first movie on a moving train. Take the Japanese Junya Sato&rsquo;s iconic, ticking-bomb, Bullet Train (1975; slated for remake). Of course, it would&rsquo;ve kinda inspired the desi, multi-starrer, The Burning Train (1980).&nbsp;
But more so, the Hollywood blockbuster, Speed (1994). Which is what, if not&mdash;according to a line in the latest, Netflix random romcom, A Family Affair&mdash;&ldquo;Die Hard on a bus&rdquo;? Couldn&rsquo;t sit through the recent, stilted, Brad Pitt starrer, Bullet Train (2022), though.
Compared to the unintentionally prescient, Korean Yeon Sang-ho&rsquo;s zombie-apocalypse brilliance, Train To Busan (2016), there are even fewer scenes of staged dialogues in Kill. At best, it&rsquo;d be enough to fit four pages of a screenplay. As per convention, a page equals a minute. I asked Bhat, if my math matches?&nbsp;
On 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: &ldquo;It became the Bible!&rdquo;&nbsp;
Usually, action directors, traditionally &lsquo;fight masters&rsquo; in India, film their own stunt set-pieces. In a movie like Kill then, Bhat would have nothing to do!
He found a willing/agreeable ally, or Seoul mate, I suppose, in the Korean, Se-yeong Oh, who&rsquo;d also choreographed action for the Parasite director Bong Joon Ho&rsquo;s Snowpiercer (2013).&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s similarly set on a train. And one of Bhat&rsquo;s admitted inspirations. The other being, James Cameron&rsquo;s Aliens (1986)&mdash;&ldquo;because both the alien and the astronaut in the movie had something vital to protect: their young one.&rdquo;
Bollywood&rsquo;s Parvez Shaikh (Sultan, Vikram Vedha) got onboard too. As it is, Koreans have mastered the filmic fiction of bashing humans to pulp.&nbsp;
Bloody Kill, bravely produced by Guneet Monga and Karan Johar, starring well-trained newcomers, Lakshya, Raghav Juyal, could be described as a mixed martial arts (MMA) flick, with raw street-fight, meeting sophisticated mortal combat.&nbsp;
Bhat says he made sure to properly cast for all the fighting roles (Ashish Vidyarthi, etc), instead of blindly enrolling effective stunt-men: &ldquo;They had to emote!&rdquo; There&rsquo;s perennially someone/something at stake.&nbsp;
What I especially loved about Kill, that gets progressively grimmer, is the collectively subtle character-graph of regular passenger-blokes, witnessing fatal madness on a train.&nbsp;
At some point, when too much fear is employed by bullies, you begin to stop fearing fear itself. Something for tyrants to fear the most!
Almost as a rule of thumb, I feel, as deaths become cheap in a movie, so does the price of the ticket. For, what&rsquo;s there to emotionally engage, if everyone can die so easy, anyway.&nbsp;
I suspect Bhat has pulled off a notable exception for Indian cinema, in that regard. What then holds the crucial key to Kill? Consistency. Always. &nbsp;
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com The views expressed in this column are the individual&rsquo;s and don&rsquo;t represent those of the paper.

When did you last hear of an Indian all-out actioner picked up for a Hollywood remake, besides getting feted at top film fests?

Just how they went for the Kill!

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Just how they went for the Kill!

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