All aboard the “Bullet Train”! The express from Tokyo to Kyoto has everything, but mostly it has a lot of highly trained assassins with conflicting goals, including a befuddled Brad Pitt as a snatch-n-grab guy dubbed Ladybug, a pair of British bros named Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry) and Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a naughty schoolgirl with big ambitions (Joey King), a grieving groom known as The Wolf (Benito A. Martínez Ocasio, aka Bad Bunny), and a woman who works with poisons called The Hornet (Zazie Beetz). Also, there’s a snake, a very venomous snake.
That should keep them all busy for the duration of the journey, over the course of one night, and indeed, director David Leitch never lets this thing slow down for a minute. That is both the glory and the downfall of “Bullet Train,” a glib, slick and shallow slice of Japanophile action entertainment that offers a very bright, shiny surface, but has absolutely no interest in revealing anything beyond that.
Zak Olkewicz adapted the screenplay from Japanese crime novelist Kotaro Isaka’s 2010 book “Maria Beetle,” and he brings a playful, ironic tone to the screenplay, which is fast, dense and deceptively simple underneath all the pandemonium. All you need to know is that Ladybug is supposed to get a briefcase, Lemon and Tangerine need to guard the briefcase, and there are many people who want the briefcase. This group rocks-n-rolls, bloodily, up, down, in, out and around the train in order to put their hands on that hunk of Samsonite, and in the end, we will all wonder: was it worth it?
The characters not cutely named after animals, bugs or citrus are given archetypes to inhabit: The Father (Andrew Koji), The Elder (Hiroyuka Sanada), The Prince (King), The White Death (Michael Shannon). They have to grapple with the meatier themes of fate, family and vengeance, because that’s what they inform the audience they’re grappling with, but these ideas are merely presented, not complicated or transcended in any way. We’ve got a train to catch after all.
Leitch, the director of “Atomic Blonde” and “Deadpool 2” and executive producer of two “John Wick” movies, keeps the action front and center, tossing various foes toward his star, Pitt. The main appeal of “Bullet Train” is that the global cast is incredibly appealing, and like clockwork, we get to see Pitt fight Ocasio, Henry, Taylor-Johnson and Beetz in succession. All the while, Ladybug flirts and goofs and munches, alternating lamentations about his bad luck and therapy-gleaned platitudes that sound like something a school principal might deploy. But who even is Ladybug? He’s merely a cipher, a stand in, not a hero to believe in.
Who even is the hero? Is it The Father, desperate to save his young son? Or The Elder, his own father, who has sworn to protect his family? Both are unfortunately sidelined to prioritize the high jinks and ultraviolence. Henry’s Lemon comes close-ish, but “Bullet Train” is really missing a hero to root for — there’s a reason why that storytelling structure works.
The bright color palette and cheeky tone is in some ways a refreshing antidote to the gray haze that has overtaken big, bombastic blockbusters of late. But the smug humor feels dated and corny, and eventually, that the film resists revealing even a crumb of inner life about these killer characters makes it exceedingly hard to care. As the last act crescendoes into a truly ear-splitting and messy cacophony of chaos and cameos, it becomes hard to see the value of “Bullet Train,” a sparkly bauble of retro costume jewelry that’s fun for a lark but ultimately junk.
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‘BULLET TRAIN’
2 stars (out of 4)
(In English and Japanese with English subtitles)
MPAA rating: R (for strong and bloody violence, pervasive language, and brief sexuality)
Running time: 2:06
How to watch: In theaters Friday
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