"Bullet Train": review

"Bullet Train" is a 2022 action-comedy directed by David Leitch (who did "Deadpool 2"). It stars Brad Pitt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Andrew Koji, Joey King, Hiroyuki Sanada, Michael Shannon, Bad Bunny, and Sandra Bullock. It is based on a Japanese thriller novel called Maria Beetle (retitled Bullet Train after translation and marketing in the West). Like the novel, the movie's story revolves around a group of assassins who, for various reasons, all end up on the same train.

Stories about witty, philosophically pensive assassins are a dime a dozen, as are action movies that take place on trains. Very little, in fact, feels original about "Bullet Train," but while the plot might not be that inspired, the characters are colorful and likable. The film carries with it a paper-thin subtext about fate and luck, but this is no profound meditation. More enjoyable is finding out how the different killers are connected—something the film occasionally shows through flashbacks to help us viewers understand cause and effect, i.e., why Party X wants to kill Party Y. Everyone here has a history.

The plot is perhaps a bit more complicated than it needs to be: a Japanese father, Yuichi Kimura (Koji), is in the hospital, staring at his badly injured son, who was pushed off a roof. The father has been told he needs to board a particular bullet train. This father turns out to be the son of The Elder (Sanada), member of a crime family that was destroyed by a Russian gangster (Shannon) who knew Japanese ways—a man known as The White Death. Also boarding the train is Ladybug (Pitt), who is a last-minute replacement for another assassin named Carver (an uncredited Ryan Reynolds). Ladybug has come out of a sort-of retirement at the prompting of his handler Maria Beetle (Bullock) to do what's supposed to be a simple snatch-and-grab of a suitcase. While the ladybug is a symbol of luck, Ladybug considers himself fairly unlucky after a string of missions goes bad. He has also been on a self-improvement kick lately, so he now refuses to use guns and has a whole arsenal of therapeutic quotes that he can toss out for any situation. Initially unaware of Ladybug's presence are two other assassins, Tangerine and Lemon (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Brian Tyree Henry). Despite being respectively white and black, the two are nicknamed "the Twins" by friends and acquaintances because they grew up together as kids. Tangerine is a perpetually angry, tightly wound Brit who is arguably the cleverer of the two. Lemon, meanwhile, finds his life-wisdom through Thomas the Tank Engine, a character in a series of British children's books that became a TV series twice over. Tangerine and Lemon are the carriers of the briefcase that Ladybug is supposed to steal. They are also tasked with escorting the wastrel son of The White Death (Logan Lerman of Percy Jackson fame; he also starred in "Fury" with Pitt), not knowing that the young man's sister, codenamed Prince (Joey King) and herself an accomplished assassin despite her innocent looks, is also on board with her own motives for being there. Along with this group, we have the Wolf (Benito A. Martínez Ocasio, a.k.a. the Bad Bunny noted above), who thinks that Ladybug is the one who murdered his wife and entire wedding party on the day the Wolf got married. In fact, the murderer that day was the Hornet (Zazie Beets, absolutely hilarious despite very little screen time), another assassin who uses boomslang venom to poison people, and who is also aboard this train.

So the movie is a lot like that thing little boys do where they collect a bunch of predatory insects and arachnids, put them all in a jar, shake the jar violently, then watch the ensuing agitated free-for-all. The mixture of assassins, all trapped on a train, immediately called to mind "Smokin' Aces," which is also about a bunch of assassins working at cross purposes and trying to kill each other in the process. The snappy dialogue will put the viewer in mind of any number of Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie films. Aaron Taylor-Johnson's angry line delivery made me think of old George (Tom Georgeson) from "A Fish Called Wanda," who was very much the same combination of pissed-off and intelligent.

Does it all work? For the most part, yes. There are some laugh-out-loud funny moments, my favorite of which is a brief flashback involving the Twins, in which we see Lemon slowly removing his blood-spattered safety visor to look in awe at the carnage laid out before him. I don't know why, but I thought Brian Tyree Henry's acting in that moment was the funniest fucking thing I'd seen in a while. The interplay among all the assassins holds the viewer's interest, and while the plot is over-convoluted, it's not completely incomprehensible. The movie does rely on a few too many implausibilities and Dickensian coincidences, but that may be a function of the script's lightweight meditation on the question of fate and luck. I appreciated how the movie set certain things up early on, leading to payoffs later in the plot. Specifically: a stolen boomslang that gets loose in the train, a pistol and suitcase both rigged to explode, and old grudges that get settled in bloody ways.

We should talk about the special effects for a moment. While the fight choreography took advantage of the train's tight spaces, there were moments of digital blood and flying debris (especially toward the end) that simply looked too digital, thus taking me a bit out of the movie. The film's third act builds to a ridiculously over-the-top climax that is very effects-heavy, and while SFX can be impressive, they can also wash over you, leaving little to no impression at all. That would have to be my one major complaint about "Bullet Train": the over-the-top effects don't actually add much to a story that could have been told with just as much intensity, but with much less flash-and-bang.

The film tries hard. I have to give it that. It's not nearly as witty as a Tarantino or Ritchie outing, but it has vivid characters who will make you care about them, placed in comically awkward and deadly situations. Some scenes will have you busting a gut, but you won't want to think too hard about the flimsy story logic in certain sections of the film. In the end, "Bullet Train" isn't a bad way to spend two hours, and it even smuggles in a hilarious Channing Tatum cameo. Tatum has some amazing comic chops. One life-lesson the movie teaches is that you should always beware those huge Japanese mascots that parade around looking all cute: they might just stab you in the throat when you're not looking.