Hand-to-hand combat is treated precisely in action movies worldwide. We have seen extraordinary hand-to-hand combat in Hollywood, Korean, and Chinese cinema. But Bollywood lagged in this genre until Kill hit the theatre.
Killing is a widespread affair in films. If it's an action, there is no question of not having any killing scenes. Critics and audiences highly appreciate Kill for its violence and action sequences.
Director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat didn't just portray killing on the screen, justifying its name 'kill'. It showed the various killing methods - Bhat portrayed every possible way on the screen.
Just because of its exaggerated violence and brutality, you can't say the film is nothing but a typical action film. Kill is a story of revenge based on a real-life incident that the director himself faced.
In 1990, then-filmmaker Nikhil Nagesh Bhat was a college student travelling to his home in Patna from Pune by Bombay Janata Express train. Some robbers looted that train's AC tier-2 compartment. In the next compartment that was stolen were a few soldiers of the Indian army. Unfortunately, they didn't know what was going into the other compartment. What if they could understand it?
Keeping that in the subconscious mind, Bhat wrote a revenge-action thriller in 2016.
A family travelled to the capital, Delhi, from Ranchi by Rajdhani Express. Two National Security Guard (NSG) commandos also travelled on the same train but in different compartments. One of the two soldiers, Amrit Rathore, a commando of the NSG, is the boyfriend of that family's elder daughter. Like the original story, the Rajdhani Express's AC-2 compartment was being looted. And then?
Then, It's a film of revenge and action. The story gets intertwined with the soldiers and the family. The story moves forward with soldiers and robbers. We all have heard the story of 'Ali Baba and 40 Chors (thieves'). Kill is a story of two soldiers and 40 robbers.
The three lead characters in the film were portrayed by three debutants, Lakshya, Raghab Juyal, and Tanya Maniktala. Lakshya was Amrit Rathore's action avatar. Tanya was as satisfactory as Tulika. But the show was stolen by Raghab Juwal, who played the best character in the film, Fani. Fani was funny, fearful and brutal. Dialogue delivery to showing off piercing brutality Juyal was brilliant.
"Aise kaun marta hai?" (Who kills like that?) Juyal's dialogue goes viral on social media across India.
Winning the hearts of the critics, the film is rated 90% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Sumantenuously, 74% were on Metacritic and 7.8/10 on IMDb, with more than nine thousand votes.
The best recognition of the film is that it will be remade in Hollywood. Kill will be the first Indian action film to be remade in Hollywood. The 87ElevenEntertainment production house in Hollywood bought the rights to remake the movie. Chad Stahelski, the director of the popular action franchise John Wick, will produce the remake.