Movie Review – Killa

A charming story on adolescence

What I thought to be Hindi movie was actually a Marathi movie. In fact, we had a very tough time to decode whether its Marathi or Bengali because the setting and few words looked like Bengali. With some hints like forts, Konkan coast, water bodies and constant reference to Pune, we came to a conclusion that it’s indeed Marathi. In a way it was a fun exercise to do amidst all the happenings in the film.

‘Killa’ is an outright charming film. My favorite genre. About kids in early teens. No matter what, it couldn’t be fully explored. It’s a stage in boys’ life they don’t know what they’re doing, they’ll be hated no matter what, they’d be at their ugliest self, doing totally random stupid stuffs, have friends for life but don’t feel when they lose them too. Lots of new experiences, lots of curiosity and everything feels like a revelation. I’ve firsthand experience of that. I also lived in a parallel universe where how I’d get into Indian cricket team after completing 8^th and be the youngest player to debut in cricket, younger than Sachin and all that. It can be simply called a beautiful phase but it’s a curious phase in boys’ life. ‘Killa’ explores that beautifully.

The film shows promise right from scene one. A boy enters a house which was not lit properly, cleans himself, sets out to eat, does the dishes and does all that without any irritation. When he first enters, we feel as if he’s an orphan who’s living by himself but we get to know he indeed has a mother. Once she comes home, she changes and they have a quiet dinner. They don’t talk much but not because they’re sad, it’s just the way they are. It doesn’t affect them to be silent. If two people can have comfortable silence between them, then there is nothing great than that. The mother-son duo seemed to have it.

Through her mother Aruna (Amruta Subhash) we get to know that Chinmay (Archit Deodhar) gets all grumpy whenever he had to start afresh with his schooling due to her constant transfers. We first think it’s her nature of job but towards the end we get to know there could have been other means for transfer too. Our next assumption would be that we feel that how he deals with the troubles in school. When Chinmay initially ogles at the girl we get a feel that he’s going to get into trouble but quite surprisingly that becomes a factor for him to get friends and he forms his own gang. When the girl looks back at him, we get a feel that it’d be childhood romance but all that happens is one smile. She doesn’t have anything to do post that.

The kids are great. Obviously, everyone’s favorite would be Bandya (Parth Bhalerao). But other kids were terrific too. It doesn’t feel like they’re acting at all. They just live their characters. The one kid who impressed me the most was the one who made late entry, Prince/Yuvraj (Gaurish Gawade). He was fabulous. The way he looks, walks, his nonchalance and aloof heroism. All were terrific. If Bandya showcases it outrightly, Prince does it with so much self-control. Not to leave off our own little hero Chinmay who holds our attention throughout the film by being such a nice guy.

I was afraid at some point we’d have a connect between Yuvraj’s dad from Dubai and Chinmay’s mom. I was praying that it shouldn’t happen. I didn’t want him to be a villain. Maybe he’s the real villain because of whom Aruna gets notice but we don’t get to see it. All we get to know about the father character is when Yuvraj asks his friends not to talk about him. It means he’d have done something wrong. That was a nice way to end a character’s story.

Like Aruna’s neighbor says, he’s a kid beyond his age. He knows when his mom is sad, how to pacify her and how to be obedient. There is one scene where he goes and hugs her mother. That’s the only scene which didn’t work for me in a film where everything else was so subtle. The way he changes himself so that his mother would be happy was terrific. When she says that she’d have to go on transfer, he immediately agrees and concentrates on some craft work. That was the heaviest scene in the film. I felt pity for her mother. The boy is sacrificing his new found friends, environment, everything just like that but as a mother of him she’s at a position where she couldn’t do anything. How bad would she have felt.