On paper, Bullet Train should be the can’t-miss action film of the summer. It sports a talented cast, a fun premise, and a director who knows his way around a fight scene. But Bullet Train derails as soon as it leaves the station. Instead of an adrenaline-pumping action adventure, it’s a loud, obnoxious and pointless pileup that’s the cinematic equivalent of a toddler slapping you on the head with plastic nunchucks for two hours.
It’s probably well past time for Brad Pitt to be given his own “John Wick”-style franchise, and the star is easily the best thing about Bullet Train. As a criminal with the codename of Ladybug, he’s a navel-gazing self-improvement addict who vents his anxieties to an unseen handler (Sandra Bullock) and dreams of putting peace out into the world. The fact that he’s an assassin is meant to be a humorous counterpoint; and it is, until the film runs that particular joke into the ground ten minutes in.
Ladybug is assigned to board the titular train in Tokyo and leave with a mysterious briefcase, but he’s unaware that other criminals are onboard. These include hitmen Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry) and Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who are in possession not only of the briefcase but of a mobster’s troubled son. There’s a father (Andrew Koji) seeking vengeance against the woman (Joey King) who pushed his son off a building. And there’s an angry psychopath known as The Wolf (Bad Bunny) who’s looking to kill the person who poisoned his fiancée.
Pitt has a lot of fun as Ladybug. He acquits himself well in the action sequences, and the way Ladybug’s Zen outlook constantly threatens to evolve into panic is sometimes very funny. And he’s working with a solid ensemble. The chemistry between Henry and Taylor-Johnson is responsible for the film’s sole moment of emotional honesty, and King makes a meal out of her role as a killer depending on her innocent look to disarm her prey. Rapper Bad Bunny doesn’t get much screen time, but does create a ferocious presence in his few scenes.
But these talented people are at the mercy of a script that thinks it’s twice as smart, funny, and surprising as it really is. Screenwriter Zak Olkewicz, adapting a book by Kotaro Osaka, fashions the story as a Tarantino-esque collision of bad guys who constantly stop to muse about the banalities of life. It’s not a bad concept, but Olkewicz has little of Tarantino’s flourish with dialogue. The film’s idea of pithy conversation is to have Lemon compare everyone he meets to characters on Thomas the Tank Engine, which is fun once or twice, but not two dozen times. The banter between Lemon and Tangerine centers largely on them talking about the fruits from which they derived their codenames; Bullet Train may not be a good movie, but those who love citrus humor will at least get something out of it. And while Pitt’s exacerbation is often funny, there are only so many times a character can whine about his bad luck before the audience starts worrying whether the curse is on them.
The film also stops cold countless times for digressions meant to fill in backstories or reveal character connections, but do little except rob the film of any narrative propulsion. An early aside where Lemon and Tangerine argue about how many people they killed on their last job is fun at first but goes on far too long, and the film’s Yakuza-centered tangents are redundant and pointless. By the time the film stops cold to follow the journey of a water bottle (seriously), even Tarantino would be considering these tangents excessive.
The film pays lip service to the web of fate the characters are supposedly caught in, but never engages it; indeed, by the end, there’s not much randomness about any of the connections at all, and the film uses its last “coincidence” as a post-credits gag. It’s just another idea tossed into a bursting bag. Character reveals meant to shock instead fly past without any resonance, and other threats are introduced only to be dispatched minutes after they appear. A subplot about a stolen snake is somehow both belabored and tossed off, and the film spends so much time letting one character mourn another’s death that when the situation is suddenly reversed, it feels cheap and pointless. By the time loyalties are decided and final scores are about to be settled, the film is such a jumbled mess that none of it means anything.
Brad Pitt in “Bullet Train.” Photo by Scott Garfield – © 2022 CTMG. All Rights Reserved.
Leitch has a strong resume of action films, including work as a producer on the “John Wick” films and directing Atomic Blonde. While this attempts the same anarchic mix of irreverence and action that Leitch harnessed in Deadpool 2, here, the humor and ultraviolence just clash.. Bodies are shot and stabbed, people are poisoned and vomit blood, and limbs are amputated. In the next breath, the characters muse about fate or talk about cartoons, punch cuddly mascots in the face, or make glib one-liners about the absurdity of their situation. If the film’s humorous moments or attempts at profundity actually connected, they might be a fun counterpoint to the carnage. Instead, the combination of graphic violence and flippant humor clang together, delivering a film that simply facilitates between different types of unpleasantness.
It doesn’t help that the film is filtered through a garish anime sensibility, full of quick cuts, bright colors and wacky sound effects. It’s stylish but empty, and all the bright colors and loud sounds simply add to an already noisy and frantic canvas. The film’s everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach means no twists or turns land because they’re part of a story where anything might as well happen. Somehow, the film even bungles the presence of Michael Shannon as a katana-wielding villain, a sentence that would have seemed incomprehensible a decade ago.
The action itself never rises to the level of a John Wick or Atomic Blonde. While there are some inventive hand-to-hand sequences, the film largely devolves into quick shots and shaky cam, and because most of the characters are largely unlikable, there’s no emotional stake to ground everything. The film’s finale, which involves a massive train derailment, is a collision of horrendous CGI and shoddy slow motion, a weightless and inane end to a story that’s already outstayed its welcome.
Bullet Train is getting a full theatrical release, but it feels like a movie developed for a streamer. It has recognizable stars in a movie that looks bright and feels designed to play in the background while more important things are going on. And at least at home, audiences will be within walking distance of the aspirin to take care of the headache this movie creates.
