Kill is the brutal thriller that action die-hards can’t miss this summer

It’s been nice to see the growing popularity of Indian cinema in the States. For many people — especially those not familiar with the work of the legendary Satyajit Ray — their entry place was Aamir Khan’s excellent 2001 cricket drama Lagaan, the most recent Indian film to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. For others, it was S.S. Rajamouli’s RRR, the exuberant and maximalist epic anti-colonialist saga and the first Indian film by an Indian production to win an Academy Award.

Those movies aren’t very similar in their stylistic approach, but they do have a lot in common: action buoyed by romance, big musical numbers with lavish visuals, and strong anti-colonialist narratives. They — and many other recent successful Indian movie exports — contain elements of “masala film,” an approach that first appeared in the 1970s but remains strong today, in large part because of the work of Khan, Rajamouli, and others to reinvent the form and keep it alive. Masala movies are known for blending all sorts of genres together to create an experience that can appeal to as many moviegoers as possible. But not every Indian movie falls into the masala category, and the new hyper-violent Hindi action thriller Kill is here to prove that to U.S. audiences when it arrives in theaters on July 4.

After getting back from a long mission, Indian army commando Amrit (Lakshya) has received news from the love of his life (Tanya Maniktala) that she is being forced by her powerful father into an arranged marriage, and the wedding is tomorrow. Along with his friend and fellow commando (Raghav Juyal), he decides to try to stop it, secretly joining the wedding party on a train to Delhi. But when bandits attack, things go horribly wrong, and violence and mayhem ensue.

A tense thriller with terrific extended fight sequences, director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat made Kill with the intent of making a brutal action movie like The Raid, playing off a real-life experience he had with a train robbery. He hired veteran action choreographers Oh Se-yeong (Snowpiercer) and Parvez Shaikh (who worked with Oh on the Bollywood blockbuster War) to design the action, and both put in some of their best work to date.

Kill makes the most of the close-quarters setting and the many different weapons on display — knives, limbs, fire extinguishers, and the architecture/layout of the train itself all play into the combat. It’s a real treat for action fans, especially when things take a turn 45 minutes in and the violence amps up significantly. Kill doesn’t go from 0 to 60; it starts at 60 and goes to 200. The movie’s action design is basically broken into two halves, allowing the team (and Lakshya as a lead) to show a variety of approaches to the fight scenes. I won’t say too much, to avoid spoilers, but the action design becomes much more lethal in response to the events of the story, which allows Kill to start with a more classic nonlethal martial arts approach to action before transitioning into something closer to what you might find in a horror movie.

With some of the most brutal, violent kills you will find in an action movie, Kill is not for everyone — again, this is absolutely not a masala film. But if you like the sound of a movie like The Raid, The Night Comes for Us, Mayhem!, and Project Wolf Hunting, with a dash of Train to Busan and the slasher-infused Equalizer 3, you can’t miss this one. There’s a lot of value in the targeted thrills of a genre exercise, and Kill knows what its intended audience wants very, very well. Next stop on this train ride: cult classic status.

Kill is out in theaters July 4.