Rating: R
Runtime: 2 hours, 6 minutes
Director: David Leitch
Quick Impressions:
As I watched Bullet Train, I alternated between thinking, “This is just like Snowpiercer as a comedy,” and, “This is nothing like Snowpiercer as a comedy. You just think that because you want to jump off the train, Sarah.”
Comparing Bullet Train to Snowpiercer may be a stretch. I might as well say it’s like Anna Karenina. I mean, there’s a train. (I guess Bullet Train does seem like the type of scenario where Tilda Swinton might show up in disguise, though she doesn’t. Other famous people do keep showing up in cameos and supporting roles. A-list stars are lurking in every compartment. I remember thinking, “All these A-list cameos remind me of Deadpool 2,” and now I see David Leitch also directed that. I wasn’t paying much attention to this movie before we saw it. My husband was the one who suggested the evening before, “Want to go to a movie?” I had to admit that probably would be more fun than crying in the dark. Probably.)
Maybe Bullet Train has something in common with all movies set on trains. As in Murder on the Orient Express, there is an over-arching plot that eventually explains why all these seemingly disparate characters happen to be on the train together. And like many train movies, this one goes off the rails in the third act (or at least the train does).
Actually, you know what? Bullet Train is like Snowpiercer. (It’s also kind of like the beginning of this review. That’s what makes it different from Snowpiercer. In Snowpiercer, the train is like society, and the protagonist is trying to reach the engine from the back, steadily making forward progress. In Bullet Train the protagonist is more like this review, going back and forth, running haphazardly all over the place. The train is like life, and everybody is running here and there, trying to remember what they learned in therapy, getting into fights they don’t understand, guessing (usually wrong) about which people to trust, occasionally committing murder, having deep conversations about Thomas the Tank Engine.
Brad Pitt’s character Ladybug is the Everyman of pandemic times. (I remember back in 2020 feeling restless and trapped by the pandemic, feeling like, “I’ve got to get out of here. I need a vacation from this situation.” But there is no escape from something the entire world is going through at the same time.)
Now we’re in a new era, an age beyond the pandemic (even though Covid hasn’t gone anywhere, and now there’s Monkey Pox, and it’s 500 degrees outside), and I look around and realize, “Yes, I still want to escape. I would prefer to have died.” But I didn’t die, and neither did Brad Pitt. So he’s forced to go to therapy and do the work that will help him to live a happier, more productive life of attempting to steal briefcases for no reason he’s ever told. Ordinarily I’m not a fan of allegory, but this is an Everyman story I can get behind. Ladybug’s life is chaotic and horrible, but the key is to just keep reframing everything and accidentally hurting people until you stumble into somebody with a more compelling story than yours, and then probably a bunch of stuff is going to blow up, and then…back to work for you.
I do think Ladybug represents all of us in these early years of the 2020s, especially the way he keeps trying to exit the scenario, to get off the train, like, “I’ve been talking to my therapist a lot, and I’ve decided I don’t want any of these things to be happening.” That’s nice. You can mull that over on the train while all the things continue happening.
I remember watching Snowpiercer thinking, “Get off the train. Just get off the train.” Of course, if you get off the train you’ll die. But on the other hand, if you stay on the train, then you’ll continue to be on the train. (I love the way one character does get off the train and then immediately responds by desperately trying to get back on the train, making an almost superhuman effort to return to the familiar chaos of the train.)
The Good:
This is a funny movie. I’m extremely depressed right now, and I still found it funny, even though through the first part my chest felt tight and I kept thinking, “Maybe I should jump off a train. Maybe I should try murdering people as a career.” I still found the plot relatively engrossing, and I laughed quite a bit at moments.
Despite not being in the best frame of mind the day I saw Bullet Train, I got sucked into this movie and found it consistently amusing, often quite engaging. It benefits from a brisk, relentless pace. The train is always moving. Something is always happening. It’s pretty well-plotted, too. Surprises (to the audience) are parceled out at regular intervals, but they’re dispensed like medication. Even though the story ends with a runaway train, the narrative is quite controlled. When the story ends, we get an ending (one that comes with neater explanation than we’d ever hope for in real life). An ending so neat (along with an explanation of everything we’ve seen worthy of Scooby–Doo or Murder She Wrote) is extraordinarily satisfying in a film that mimics real life (because we’d never get an explanation that satisfying in real life).
The cast is delightful, though it made me feel so old. It’s full of child actors who grew up, Joey King (who always makes me want to play hide and clap in a haunted house), Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Logan Lerman (I didn’t even recognize him! I was shocked to see his name in the end credits). For years, my husband and I have been seeing Brian Tyree Henry in stuff and saying, “He’s such a good actor! He needs to be in more stuff!” And now we’re like, “It’s working! He’s in more stuff! We spoke that into happening!”
Henry and Taylor-Johnson play two of the movie’s most charming characters. As the film goes on, these two keep getting more and more sympathetic. At first, I was like, “Okay, I guess these guys are funny.” I was very reluctant to like them, but by the end, they’re like the heroes of the movie who bring more emotion to the story than anyone else. It seems initially that they’ll be villainous comic relief, but not so.
Giving the names of the stars feels like a spoiler because most of them get these dramatic surprise entrances. I was happy to recognize Hiroyuki Sanada as “the guy from The Wolverine.” (He’s been in tons of stuff, but that’s what I remembered him from for some reason, though I was scared I was making it up.) His character is quite compelling. Expect to see Zazie Beets (from Joker), Bad Bunny, Andrew Koji, and Masi Oka (from the show Heroes).
Brad Pitt as Ladybug is funny throughout. Although he is the star and (sort of) the protagonist, he always remains so low key. Everything in his life just seems to happen to him. He complains about being unlucky, but that’s something of an understatement. His way of interacting with the world is mesmerizing. Though he gets a couple of serious moments, the whole performance is a comedic one (which is weird because he’s an Everyman character trapped in an awful situation). Pitt’s usually funny when he tries to be. On the way to the theater, my husband was telling me that his boss recently saw The Lost City (starring Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum) and that Brad Pitt was the funniest one in the whole thing.
“That’s not surprising,” I said. “He’s great with comedy.”
And, for whatever reason, online periodicals really want to make sure I know that he’s been going to therapy, he occasionally dates, and he has friends. (I swear one headline was like, Brad Pitt Goes Out Sometimes or something, and then there was nothing more in the story but that.)
The film’s visual aesthetic makes it fun to watch. Jonathan Sela’s cinematography makes me want to visit Japan, so much eye-popping Neon. (Sela also did the cinematography for The Lost City. I guess I need to watch that.) I liked the film’s score, too. Music seems to propel us through every high-speed scene.
Every time I see a movie set in urban Japan, I think, “We really need to take a trip to Tokyo.” There’s a kind of hyper-reality to this look at Japan, though. I was somewhat surprised to learn the movie’s based on a novel by Kôtarô Isaka because all the Neon and frenetically silly (though deadly serious) violence seem like something you’d usually get in a graphic novel adaptation.
Best Scene:
My favorite moment is when Tangerine discovers Diesel, and a late surprise also involving tangerines brought us a surge of delight. (I think this is the movie’s very last scene.)
Beset Scene Visually:
Pitt really can be hilarious. When Ladybug puts in extra effort to try to deceive henchmen by holding a briefcase, I might have laughed out loud. (It was more a throaty noise than a full-bodied laugh, but that moment is extremely funny.) What happens with the snake is excellent visual humor, too (and nice pay-off of an earlier moment).
I also found it so funny when one of the characters immediately made a huge effort to get back on the train. It was almost cartoonish. It reminded me a bit of A Fish Called Wanda. (I guess because you think, “Well, this probably isn’t going to end well for him,” but you’re smiling.)
Best Action Sequence:
Ladybug’s battle with an agile poisoner has killer fight choreography that I never could have learned. There’s also a shocking amount of comedy involved given the seriousness of the situation. (Ladybug’s so funny to watch on screen, but I’m not sure that I would like him in real life. Listening to his voice as I died would be additional torture.)
The Negatives:
I don’t like what’s done with Joey King’s character. I like Joey King, and I have no problems with her performance at all. I’ve never seen her play a character quite like this, and she does it well. The problem is, I feel like there’s some weird misogyny in the way the movie ultimately treats her. Keep in mind, 90 percent of the characters in this film are professional criminals. During the course of the movie, all of them either deliberately kill, try to kill, accidentally kill, or severely wound someone. For the most part, they’re not nice people, though most of them are quite likeable, and they’re all just trying to survive. There’s something not quite right about the way she is dismissed (especially because being habitually dismissed is her entire stated motivation). I’m trying to avoid spoilers here, or I could make this point much more clearly. But I mean, Brad Pitt is “accidentally” killing people right and left, and he’s so cute and funny and relatable hahahaha. Something just doesn’t seem quite fair about the way the audience is encouraged to react to Joey King’s character. (When you accidentally kill people, they’re still dead. Even when you don’t understand your own actions, or when you don’t have complex motives, when you kill someone, that person is dead. I mean, yes, it’s better not to be conniving, malicious, vindictive, but does the intention of the killer make a difference to the dead person? Dead is dead.) Several people in the story see their actions as portentous or deeply significant. I just think there’s a moment in this film that encourages a very unsavory sort of misogyny. (This is hard to discuss clearly without spoilers. Please don’t think I don’t mind the unsavory quality of objectionable behavior or have any moral sense about which actions are more evil.)
The “quiet car” jokes almost annoyed me for some reason. I kept thinking, “Honestly, that’s just too silly.” But by the end I was so invested in Brian Tyree Henry’s character that I’m pretty sure I’d like it better on a second viewing.
Overall:
Bullet Train is a fun summer movie. In many ways, it felt almost like a throw-back, like something I would have watched with my parents in the late 90s or early 2000s. But it’s also rather pointedly a product of its time. Like all of us, Pitt’s been trying to learn coping skills and make peace with a world that often feels like an inescapable runaway train. If you’re looking for a last hurrah at the movie theater before school starts, Bullet Train is a good choice. (To be clear, it is violent and probably full of profanity (which I never seem to register), but our thirteen-year-old could have watched it without a problem.) If you like Brad Pitt or movies about trains, go ahead and buy a ticket for Bullet Train.