James Oconner 
Anil Krishna 
Jonathan Millar 
© Blue Finch Films
If you thought action movies had already done pretty much everything they could with violence, Kick On might have something new for you. At least, that’s what the film is hoping to prove.
The movie premiered in the Midnight Madness section at the Toronto International Film Festival, and director Nick Kozakis has a fairly memorable way of describing it. He calls Kick On “John Wick on methamphetamine,” which is probably enough to give you an idea of the kind of movie this is. It’s an action-horror film that’s violent, chaotic and apparently has very little interest in slowing down once things go wrong.
The story follows four friends who are expecting a fun night out, only for the whole thing to take a very ugly turn. They end up trapped inside the luxurious mansion of the unstable son of a powerful crime lord, and what starts as a night of partying turns into a fight to stay alive. There is paranoia, betrayal and plenty of violence, with the situation getting worse pretty much every time the characters think they have found a way out.
But Kozakis wasn’t looking to make a movie where the action is just people hitting each other for two hours. He wanted the violence to feel physical and, as much as possible, real. The director, who has previously worked on music videos, relied heavily on practical effects, with professional stunt performers carrying out the action and traditional makeup and prosthetics being used for the more gruesome moments.
That practical approach apparently goes pretty far. Prosthetic makeup designer Larry Van Duynhoven, whose credits include Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Mortal Kombat and Bring Her Back, worked on the film’s injuries and effects. For one particularly nasty sequence, he even made an exact replica of actor Tyrone Ngatai’s head so it could be destroyed on camera. Sometimes the old-fashioned way really is the better way to make something look horrible.
Markella Kavenagh Leads the Cast
The film stars Markella Kavenagh, best known to many viewers for playing Nori in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. She plays Eden, a young woman who is already dealing with anxiety over what is happening to her sister Gracie. She leaves home to deal with the situation herself, only to find herself caught up in something considerably worse.
Nikolai Nikolaeff plays Ray, the son of the crime boss whose mansion becomes the centre of all this chaos. Ray isn’t being presented as a simple movie villain, either. He’s someone who has been badly affected by a toxic upbringing, and while that doesn’t exactly excuse the terrible things he does, it gives the character a little more going on than simply being the bad guy everyone has to escape from.
One of the more interesting things about Kick On is that it apparently wants to have both sides of the equation. There is the ridiculous, over-the-top action that comes with a description like “John Wick on meth,” but there is also an attempt to spend time with the people caught inside that violence. Whether those two sides actually work together is something audiences will have to decide for themselves.
The entire film was shot in just twenty days, which is a pretty short amount of time for something this physically demanding. After its TIFF debut, Kick On certainly has the ingredients to become one of those action movies that develops a following of its own, especially if it delivers on the insane premise. Calling it a John Wick movie turned up several notches is a big claim, but at least Kick On doesn’t seem shy about trying to live up to it.
Source: Variety
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