Will you give me some terms which may be used in the context of beating somebody up?

I’m translating the German subtitles of a friend’s movie.

In the movie, a man beats up a woman. The sentence I am struggling with is,

“He started to _ me.”

For the blank space, I need something which will sound neither clinical nor too colloquial.

I thought I’d ask my jelly friends. Which term(s) seem fitting?