by James Murphy
Brad Pitt, as a previous star in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds and Guy Ritchie’s Snatch returns to familiar territory in Bullet Train, the ensemble crime dark comedy adaptation of Kōtarō Isaka’s novel Maria Beetle, named after Sandra Bullock’s character. Bullock, no stranger to public transport themed action films, plays hitman Pitt’s handler, mostly off-screen. Bullet Train’s plot is as frenetic as a shinkansen and in trying to incorporate as much content from the novel as possible, occasionally becomes as overcrowded as peak hour on the tube. While the film does miss a few stops, though, the destination that it arrives at is immensely satisfying, and there are some stunning views along the way.
The first 30 minutes of Bullet Train are overwhelming on the senses, as John Wick and Deadpool 2 director David Leitch establishes the intricately interweaving and improbable story: an international menagerie of assassins (and a lethally venomous snake) either board the Tokyo bullet train at Japan’s capital city, or make their way onto the train during the one-minute stopovers along the way; it’s a little like a wrestling royal rumble: who’s going to enter the battle next? There’s Joey Adams’ Prince, a gender-swapped from the novel inspired by Machiavelli’s famous work; the British twins, Lemon and Tangerine played by Brian Tyree Henry and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Hiroyuki Sanada and Andrew Koji as a father and son pair of Japanese assassins and more. Each assassin is on the train for notionally different purposes but they are all connected somehow, with most signs pointing to crime kingpin, the White Death, played by Michael Shannon. The revelations regarding why fate, or nefarious scheming, brought them there is logical and pleasurable and given Leitch’s resume, the action scenes and fatalities are flawless victories.
The films flaws, though, are mainly the sheer number of moving parts resulting in rushed pacing. It’s a story that could either have been trimmed in pre-production or perhaps better told in a six-part TV series. There is a degree of character development through slick flashbacks and you do ultimately feel for some characters, most notably Lemon and Tangerine, though Bullock’s role is literally phoned in. There has also been criticism of the white washing of the cast, with Japanese characters in the novel replaced by international stars. Some of the source materials themes, then, may have been lost in the translation.
For fans of darkly comedic splatter fests like The Boys, though, Bullet Train ticks all the boxes. It isn’t rocket science, but it is smarter than your average Fast and the Furious sequel.
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