Director: Nikhil Nagesh Bhat

Stars: Lakshya, Raghav Juyal, Tanya Maniktala, Abhishek Chauhan

Billed as the most violent and goriest film India has ever produced writer-director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat’s picture, set almost entirely on a speeding train, is the type of no-frills purposeful actioner that is always welcome.

A brief prologue introduces us to handsome army commando, Amrit (Lakshya) as he crashes the engagement party of his love Tulika (Maniktala), the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, who is set for an engaged marriage. Later, Amrit and a faithful army pal board a New Delhi-bound train in order to whisk Tulika away.

Then a forty strong gang of ruthless thieves, led by the fearsome young hothead Fani (Juyal) boards the train and begin to terrorise the passengers, and Amrit must step in. Fani’s discovery that a rich man’s daughter is on board raises the stakes further.

Narratively, there’s a half-hearted nod to Amrit and Fani being two sides of the same coin (there’s a slight resemblance between the two), but as the title suggests, this is really all about the aggro as Bhat stages ever more imaginative and immaculately orchestrated fights, mostly gun-free affairs deploying knives, hammers, and in one the film’s goriest moments (and that’s saying something frankly), a toilet seat. Imagine ‘The Raid’ on the rails crossed with ‘Die Hard’ with lashings of lurid bloodletting a la Peckinpah and you get the picture. Vivid characterisation isn’t an essential here but Raghav Juyal’s Fani, a villain who happily rejects codes of honour to embrace his inner scuzziness, is nasty fun.

Kill is released on 5th July

David Willoughby

Follow David Twitter @DWill_Crackfilm