Kills on Wheels

This offbeat Hungarian hitman thriller turns a dark subject into an unexpected tale of triumph and hope. Zoli (Zoltán Fenyvesi) and Barba (Ádám Fekete) are disabled teenagers in a rehabilitation facility who meet Janos (Szabolcs Thuróczy), a former fireman now paralyzed from the waist down. Gruff and cynical, Janos is a hitman for a gangster and he drafts the boys into his latest job, a one-time gig that turns into the beginning of a successful partnership and an unexpected friendship. Thuróczy is an able-bodied acting veteran who invests his misanthropic thug with a complicated mix of impulses and emotions while also showing a human side. The boys, however, are played by actual handicapped actors making their respective film debuts and they are very effective in the roles, especially Fenyvesi as aspiring comic book artist Zoli, who nurses a grudge against the father who abandoned both him and his mother. The teens turn their story into a graphic novel and writer-director Attila Till uses artwork and comic book panels for transitions and punctuation. Some of the elaborate assassinations stretch plausibility, but it all ultimately works, thanks to the way that Till reframes the story in the final scenes. In its own unconventional way, Kills on Wheels is an uplifting portrait of disabled individuals creatively defying expectations and limitations. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)