Film review: ‘BULLET TRAIN’ by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’
Bullet Train is one of the most irritating films so far this year: a manic, juvenile, cartoonish pastiche of Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino that substitutes caricature for character and a loose collection of violent, yet dull sight gags for plot.
Based on the Japanese novel Maria Beetle by Kotaro Isaka, the film sees a gaggle of professional killers: American goofball Ladybug (Brad Pitt), gobby geezers Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry), the seemingly innocent yet ruthless young woman Prince (Joey King) and Japanese assassin, Yuichi Kimura (Andrew Koji) converge on a Tokyo bullet train in apparently separate missions. They discover, however, that they’re all in pursuit of a silver briefcase connected to who else but our old mate, the feared, mercurial, stringy-haired, Kaiser Sose-esque Russian crime boss (Michael Shannon).
As Hitchcock’s Strangers On A Train and numerous Bond films have shown, the confined setting of a moving train can be a highly effective environment for mystery and action stories. Among other missteps, Bullet Train almost completely fails to capitalise on the setting’s limited and threatening physical space.
Bullet Train comes from director David Leitch who gave us some of the most bruising and ludicrous action flicks of recent years such as Nobody, Atomic Blonde and John Wick. While those films were far from perfect, they were definitely more thrilling than Bullet Train. Rather than the tense, exciting comedy-tinged action film that some may have expected, Bullet Train is mostly a series of highly unrealistic, poorly choreographed, occasionally gory fight scenes that invariably have characters grimacing and gurning at the camera and strutting in slow motion. Added to this are annoyingly unfunny pop-cultural squabbles between the various assassins; a running gag about Thomas the Tank Engine is particularly tedious. The movie is also visually unappealing, the CGI train looks fake and despite the neon-lit clutter of the world through which it passes, there no real sense that we’re in Japan.
The film might have been tolerable if the characters were remotely interesting but with one exception none of them are. Pitt, who for some reason sports a floppy hat cricketers used to wear in the 70’s, just comes across as a dopey stoner and his oh-so-ironic Zen peace mantras are almost as mind-numbing an attempt at comedy as the Thomas the Tank Engine bit. Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Brian Tyree Henry just end up as lame attempts at jokey, casually murderous Guy Ritchie characters. Andrew Koji isn’t given a lot to do except grimace and grumble and look forlorn for most of the film. As Prince, though, Joey King’s mix of cuteness and calculating malevolence has at least a sliver of menace. The film’s casting actually generated controversy as the leads are mostly non-Asian while the Asian actors are largely relegated to the background despite this film being set in Japan.
There’s barely an atom of sincerity or wit in this film which might have been fine if it was a fun, exciting piece of bubble gum cinema but it’s not even that.
Nick’s rating: **
Genre: Drama/ Action.
Classification: MA15+.
Director(s): David Leitch.
Release date: 4th Aug 2022.
Running time: 126 mins.
Reviewer: Nick Gardener can be heard on “Built For Speed” every Friday night from 8-10pm on 88.3 Southern FM.