I like train movies. It is an event site full of potential, which squeezes many strangers into a limited space – like a theater stage that is constantly in motion. As we know, one of the first films ever shown to an audience was the Lumiere brothers’ 1895 “Train Enters the Station” (it is said to have caused people to run from their seats for fear that the train would come off the screen and run over them). And in 1903, the first Western “The Great Train Robbery” by Edwin S. Porter, which was the biggest box office hit of the early days of cinema. Something about the power of the movement of the chain of wagons carried by a locomotive, more effective than any other means of transportation. Then came great full-length train movies, such as Buster Keaton’s The General, Hitchcock’s The Missing Lady, Wes Anderson’s Train to Darjeeling and Bong Joon-Ho’s The Ice Train, and many more And good ones (I’m deliberately ignoring “Murder on the Orient Express” by Kenneth Branagh).
The new train movie, “Bullet Train”, will certainly not be remembered as one of the greats of the genre, but it is fun as a summer movie that tries very hard, and quite succeeds, to be cool. This is one of the many action films in the tradition between Sireno de Bergerac John and McClane that try to combine a lot of cleverness between the beatings and the shootings, and this time it sounds less effortful than usual. “The Bullet Train” is based on a celebrated Japanese book from 2010 written by Kotaro Isuke. It tells the story of several professional assassins who collide with each other on a high-speed train rushing from Tokyo to Kyoto. Naturally, the original characters are Japanese. In the Hollywood movie we were left with only a Japanese father and son, and all the rest are Western stars (and starlets). In the spirit of the times, the diverse casting (white, black, hispanic, woman) provoked chatter precisely because the location of the incident remained Japanese – and if so, why do the assassins look like Brad Pitt and Aaron Taylor Johnson? But if we put this grievance aside, the cast is the strong card of the film.
Pitt is completely in his element as an assassin known as Ladybug who receives instructions over the phone from his agent (if you recognize the voice, you won’t be surprised at the end of the film). He is recruited for a simple task – to get on the train, find a silver document bag there, and bring it to a certain destination. But the case, it turns out, is the responsibility of a pair of other assassins, Lemon (Brian Tyree-Henry from “Atlanta”) and Mandarina (Taylor-Johnson), who constantly argue with each other (how many victims did we leave behind on the mission in Bolivia – 16 or 17 ?). There is also the assassin Yoichi Kimura (Andrew Koji, the Japanese in the group) who came to the train to take revenge on the person who pushed his young son off the roof of a building, and is surprised to find out that it is an assassin who presents herself as an innocent schoolgirl (Joey King from the series of youth films “The Kissing Booth “). The Puerto Rican rapper “Bud Bunny” also gets on the train with a desire for revenge, and there are several other stars who do not appear on the poster, so I will not reveal their identities here.
Except for the ticket clerk and the drinks seller, the train that shuttles between the stations is almost empty of regular passengers. This is puzzling until at some point we are told that someone has purchased all the tickets. The absence of passengers allows the assassins mentioned above, and those who are not, to operate quite freely. Each, it seems, has a different mission, and they are entangled in each other’s legs. And there is also a poisonous snake.
Hey, it’s Piper Boy! (from Bullet Train)
Taylor-Johnson and Tyree-Henry prove to be a successful comedy duo, and after the film they can go on tour. In general, Taylor-Johnson is becoming a fine character actor with the looks of a star. King is also great as the manipulative and very clever girl (in the literary source it is a boy), who manages to confuse everyone with her Tweety Bird-style pretense. The recurring plot trick is that the stops at the stations on the way are very short, so the characters are unable to complete their tasks and get off the train.
The direction is signed by David Leitch, who signed “Atomic Bomb” and “Deadpool 2”. He brings here the same aggressive and winking humor that tries really hard to be cool. This time, as mentioned, it works better, perhaps also because of the solid literary base. The musical choices are witty (gunshots set to Engelbert Humperdinck), and the action is good. A guest star who pops out of nowhere in the role of an innocent passenger gets the biggest laughs, but the truth is that the lack of additional passengers prevents “Bullet Train” from being a real train movie. The speed at which the train was moving is also not used until the ending sequence. Two hours and six minutes is too much for a film whose entire purpose is to entertain us through a combination of humorous violence and violent jokes, but large parts of it are indeed entertaining (and it should be noted that at the press screening the translation attached to the film was unusually poor. I’m told it will be fixed as soon as possible. Report what you find out ).
3.5 stars
Bullet Train Director: David Leach. With Brad Pitt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree-Henry, Joey King, Michael Shannon. USA 2022, 126 min.