Rifle Club (2024) Movie Review: This Aashiq Abu Directorial is Operating Fully on Vibes, and Sometimes That’s Enough

“Rifle Club” by Aashiq Abu delivers neon-lit chaos, gun culture critique, and an all-timer third act in one of 2024’s sexiest thrillers.

The conceit of “The Most Dangerous Game” – the 1932 pre-code horror movie directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack and Irving Pichell – was a horror movie that takes the romanticization of the hunt and uses that to delineate the psychology of a serial killer. From a structural standpoint, it allows the template of victims trapped in a desolate location and being hunted off one by one.

The influence of “The Most Dangerous Game” would be numerous, both directly and through differing adaptations, with the basic concept choosing to remain the same. What Aashiq Abu chooses to do is take that basic idea and craft a world where the love of guns and a celebration of gun culture and the hunt would bring individuals together, resulting in the titular “Rifle Club.” Then, he chooses to burst the gunpowder and forested bubble of the Rifle Club through both minor and major events.

On the one hand, a Malayalam film star wants to break away from his romantic star image by starring in an action movie, leading him to be hosted by members of the rifle club and the film star to be escorted for a night out in the jungle. On the other hand, that same night, a house dancer and her boyfriend, who is a stuntman, accidentally kill the younger son of the notorious underworld don who owns that same club and is housing important guests. The couple then is on the run, seeking refuge at the rifle club, while the don and his psychotic elder son wage an attack on the unsuspecting members of the club.

Abu is clearly choosing to operate in a film filled with style and excess. There are extended dance numbers, an alternative hip-hop track by hip-hop group Imbachi, and even shades of jazz, all under the supervision of Rex Vijayan. You couple that with Abu’s first time behind the camera as a cinematographer, and style truly becomes the substance. The use of neon automatically gives it an air of razzle-dazzle that, in hindsight, could also be categorized as orgasmic, as would be the gunfights and the bullet holes.

The problem is the time taken to get to the climactic battle. For a movie having a runtime of 113 minutes, it takes an inexorable amount of time to even get to the rifle club. The addition of dance numbers, slow-motion-induced intro sequences, etc., only further elongates a movie that is already a somewhat stylistic exercise to begin with. This is a film where the brevity might have served it better, especially considering that neither of the characters within the Rifle Club turns out to be interesting until the last act of the film when all the confrontation comes to a head. The majority of the second act—club secretary Aravan (Dileesh Pothan) escorting the film star to the hunt and giving us a window into the character, as well as the rest of the members of the Rifle Club—are at best a surface-level exploration of the psyche.

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Thus we are left to enjoy the over-the-top antics and the vibes of the characters and the film, respectively. And in that regard, Anurag Kashyap’s portrayal of Don Dayanand Bare encapsulates these two disparate tonalities perfectly. He is cartoonish, prone to anger, and so vulnerable with his emotions that it allows for a dose of unpredictability. As a result, the altercation between Dayanand and the members of the Rifle Club provides that ample dopamine rush.

It also helps that the final act—taking a healthy amount of inspiration from “Seven Samurai” as well as “Shaun of the Dead”—doesn’t hold itself back in becoming utterly bonkers: motocross-riding shooters entering the clubs and letting loose a hail of bullets, the wheelchair using patriarch laughing at being shot on his paralyzed leg and shooting back undeterred, the two sisters-in-law having a competition on who could rack up the most amount of kills, or even a hint at a relationship being given a spark due to being surrounded by a hail of gunfire.

These are all touches and flourishes in a film so focused on style and vibe that the finesse and precision become lacking. It should have taken a page out of the book of “The Most Dangerous Game” and reduced the runtime even further. The violence and the neon-lit atmosphere of the movie would have been carried more smoothly as a result, with flaws being ignored at the service of a rollicking good time. As it stands, it is still one of the sexier movies of 2024, with an absolute all-timer of a third act.