Kills on Wheels

Following Gabriele Mainetti's They Call Me Jeeg Robot (2015) in blurring the line between comic-book bravura and real life, Attila Till's second feature is not only notable for its attitude to disability, but also for its casting of differently able actors. Wheelchair-user Zoltan Fenyvesi and cerebral palsy sufferer Adam Fekete play Zolika and Barba, care-home roommates who devote their time to producing a graphic novel. The 20-somethings get fresh inspiration after becoming the accomplices of a new resident (Szabolcs Thuroczy) who is paralysed from the waist down but hoping to win back his girlfriend with the money he makes as an assassin for a Serbian crime lord (Dusan Vitanovic). The hits are ingeniously staged, shot and edited, and challenge preconceptions about various debilitating conditions. But Till tempers the edgy wit with a whiff of sentimentality in a subplot about Zolika's mother fretting about raising the money for a life-saving operation that her son requires on his spine. Thuroczy makes a convincing paraplegic, but first-timer Fenyvesi and relative newcomer Fekete deserve to become the poster boys of cine-diversity.