Director: David Leitch
Writer: Zak Olkewicz
Starring: Brad Pitt, Joey King, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Sandra Bullock
Synopsis: Five assassins aboard a fast-moving bullet train find out their missions have something in common.
If there’s anything that makes me nostalgic for the action films of the 1990s, it’s Bullet Train, a slick thrill ride that has plenty of entertaining chases and kinetic fight scenes but ultimately succumbs to an overstuffed plot of too many characters. It’s ironic that Sandra Bullock has a small role since the movie Bullet Train reminds me the most of is 1994’s Speed, a similarly action-packed summer blockbuster set on a moving vehicle with a big ensemble cast.
But what makes Speed so much better is its simplified approach to the narrative, the characters relatable but without too much backstory, the humor and drama always realistic despite the plot’s glorious absurdity. Bullet Train could have been the Speed of 2022, but director David Leitch (Deadpool 2, Atomic Blonde) piles on so much plot and so many flashbacks throughout the crazy long two-hour running time that the film is only successful in tiny segments.
Brad Pitt plays Ladybug, an assassin who’s had bad luck on one mission after another and only agrees to another job because of its ease: board a bullet train in Japan, fetch a silver briefcase, and step right back off. There’s not a lot of time to disembark once he grabs the case—only a minute—but there are plenty of stops along the way, and the confident Ladybug feels his bad luck is about to turn around. Alas, he ends up facing many of his adversaries, including the lethal brotherly team Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry), along with Prince (Joey King), Wolf (Bad Bunny), and The Hornet (Zazie Beetz). Some cameos pop up along the way, too, mostly characters of little consequence.
Bullet Train works best when it focuses on Ladybug, his many quirks, and his tireless mission to get the briefcase off the train even when he’s faced with one enemy after another at seemingly every stop. Brad Pitt has always been a compelling actor, even in brainless action vehicles like World War Z, and his charisma takes Bullet Train a long way, his line deliveries always a pleasure, his banter with the various characters sharp and well-written.
The film gives him lots to do physically, and yes, it’s the many visceral fight scenes that make Bullet Train worth seeing, Leitch keeping the choreography creative and with as little CGI as possible. You can feel Ladybug always searching for a better weapon as yet another adversary comes at him with everything they’ve got, at one point a bottled sparkling water used for a blow to the head. Lots of good plantings and payoff serve the story well, like a poisonous snake let loose on the train, and a character taking one too many sips of a tainted drink.
What the movie struggles with the most is its integration of all the characters while also serving up the audience all of their detailed backstories. We don’t need to stay on the train the entire time, it’s fine to get a glimpse at some of the eccentric assassins in flashback, but screenwriter Zack Olkewicz (Fear Street: Part Two – 1978) provides enough of it to bring the story to a halt and annihilate any consistency to the film’s pacing. It’s supposed to be amusing to look back at how many people Tangerine and Lemon killed in graphic detail, and I suppose it’s unique to get backstory on the aforementioned bottled sparkling water, too, Leitch including a segment that shows how the bottle got from a vending machine to Ladybug’s hand in a pivotal moment.
It’s the final act where I felt the length most, the film introducing a big bad played by an Oscar-nominated actor late in the game who is given endlessly long screentime, essentially becoming the ultimate version of Roger Ebert’s Talking Killer Syndrome of a summer 2022 release; the narrative appears to be wrapping up before he’s introduced, and then there’s another twenty minutes of plot to weed through.
Many actors are used well, like Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Hiroyuki Sanada as The Elder in particular, but many actors are sadly wasted, like Logan Lerman as The Son, who gets all of one good dialogue scene. And let’s talk about Sandra Bullock, shall we? She and Pitt reportedly swapped cameos, Pitt for The Lost City, Bullock for Bullet Train. So why does Pitt get to be an absolute riot in a few key scenes in The Lost City, not only funny and charming but also given a genuine character to play, while Bullock is just a voice on the end of a phone call before she appears in the last scene for all of a minute and is given nothing to do? This is technically her first action film since Speed 2: Cruise Control twenty-five years ago (if you don’t count Gravity), and it seems a missed opportunity to not have physically incorporated her character more, potentially in the final shoot-out.
Overall Bullet Train is a mixed bag, worth seeing for action fans, but maybe at a matinee screening or when it hits VOD. There’s a tighter and better 100-minute movie in that 126-minute high-energy extravaganza with at least two characters’ long winded flashbacks dropped. Pitt makes it worth the ride, easily, but I couldn’t help feeling as I stepped out of the theater that it could have been so much more.
