There was a time when there was something romantic about travelling on trains, but not anymore. Now it’s a constant battle; passengers talking on their phones on speakerphone, eating smelly foods next to you, with their bum cheek encroaching on your seat, as another plays some awful girly pop tune into the carriage. It could turn someone to violence.

Maybe that was the inspiration for writer and director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat’s latest, with the majority of it taking place on an Indian commuter train.

Returning home on a spot of leave from the army are commandos Amrit (Lakshya) and his friend Fani (Raghav Juyal). Amrit is keen to see his long term girlfriend Tulika (Tanya Singh) – well he says long term girlfriend, but her father has other ideas as he has just got her engaged, and not to Amrit.

When Amrit learns of this, he wants to talk to her straight away, only to learn that she and her family are boarding a train to New Delhi. So Amrit decides to jump on it too, dragging Fani along.

Unbeknownst to them both, a large number of bandits have also boarded the train, with the intent of stealing what they can from the passengers on board, at any cost.

Love often has to overcome a host of obstacles, but how does it handle a train full of vicious bandits?

There have been a number of films with an overt violent theme released in recent years, such as the John Wick franchise, Nobody, and Dev Patel’s Monkey Man. And this Indian action flick very much wears those influences on its sleeves.

At first it disguises itself as a possible romantic film, with a couple in love struggling to make their relationship official, but as soon as the action transfers to the train, which is fairly soon into proceedings, it turns into a very different beast.

It is then all out action, so much so that it doesn’t even have time for the film’s title to flash up, which barely makes an appearance until about 40 minutes in. It’s as if Indian director Bhat has no time for such niceties, as all hell breaks loose on the train.

And boy is it violent. Perhaps it’s due in part to the lack of guns, with only one making a brief appearance, with everything else mostly blade related, with everyone on board seemingly carry one of some description.

It actually gets a little overwhelming in places, and you have to feel sorry for the film’s hero Amrit – played brilliantly by Lakshya, making his big screen debut – who ends up with more slices than a Christmas ham. And yet his impressive endurance can be overlooked, as the whirlwind of action doesn’t fail to impress.

The fact that the director drafted in two South Korean stuntmen as action co-ordinators may have helped make it feel like a world cinema action flick, as opposed to an atypical Indian one.

His direction is very sharp and fluid too, with everything moving so fast on the train, leaving no time to take a breath. Whatever it is, it certainly gives the film a welcome edge.

It’s brutally savage, that although borrows heavily from the Hollywood films that clearly inspired it, it also still manages to have a violent identity all of its own, including having a cracking soundtrack throughout.

If you enjoy a speeding spectacle of violence, Kill proves to be very much a cut above.