Bullet Train (2022) Review
“You’re all in my story.”
David Leitch’s Bullet Train is an often-ugly looking, mostly-terribly-paced, hot action-packed mess of a film that somehow ends up only feeling like wasted potential. Even with a stacked cast, the overly long and convoluted script feels like a letdown when this entire endeavor might have felt more impactful if it was played straight instead. Brad Pitt gives his best Ryan Reynolds impression (there’s one moment here that tell you the writers know this too), Brain Tyree Henry plays a Thomas the Tank engine obsessed assassin while Aaron Taylor Johnson plays his hardheaded brother, and Joey King plays a sociopathic murderer in disguise as a school girl. On paper, this sounds like an absolute delight to experience unfold on screen but the overbearing (often terrible) editing and keen emphasis on generically juvenile humor hinder this from truly breaking the mold as an action film. Additionally, the whole film feels like a cheap mesh of everything Leitch has worked on before – from John Wick to Deadpool 2.
The story starts simple enough. An assassin codenamed “Ladybug” (Pitt) is down on his luck and subbing in for a mission in which he must procure a briefcase from a bullet train headed from Tokyo to Kyoto. Obviously, things don’t go as planned as numerous shady individuals are looking for the very same case. What ensues is a chaotic and terribly edited first act that, thankfully, has enough character to keep it afloat till it finds somewhat of a footing. A huge problem though is that most of the characters sound the same; a hodgepodge of Ryan Reynolds clones constantly trying to one up each other. And sure, there are moments of cheekiness here that work but eventually just feels like an obnoxious endeavor when the movie refuses to move on. Assassin Brothers “Tangerine” (Johnson) and “Lemon” (Henry) are genuinely the highlight of the film and manage to stand out as the “emotional core” within the convoluted script. “Lemon”, especially, with his obsession of Thomas the Tank Engine, provides the film with the only real character that sticks out. And, the film knows this too, so it hammers it down tenfold – to varying levels of success. Some jokes land, a majority do not, and the consistency with the visual humor comes and goes – depending on how badly edited the scenes are.
If I’m being honest, I love a good train movie; Unstoppable, The Darjeeling Limited, Train to Busan, Snowpiercer, and Source Code just to name a few. Bullet Train in its entirety feels like a cheap gimmick – as if the writers thought it would be funny enough to have a horde of assassins fight inside a hunk of metal going 320km/h. And the creativity stops there. The bullet train fight in The Wolverine works so well because, that’s it, it’s a singular scene. The train never evolves from more than just a backdrop in Bullet Train and feels no more integrated to the narrative by the end than when it began. Ladybug’s moral conundrum feels inadequate enough to hit those narrative beats because he was never really a character to begin with. Plus – the cheap metaphor of comparing life to a speeding train doesn’t end up working because of his weak characterization in the first place. Bad Bunny and Zazie Beetz are essentially piled into cameo humor
Undoubtedly, there are a couple good laughs to be had here and, in many ways, this is an entirely viable watch for groups whose focus is on alcohol and not the movie at hand. Bullet Train prides itself on being a fast-paced “quirky” action-comedy and, though I get why, I genuinely think it would have benefited from taking more time with its setup and ramping up from there. Or, if it wanted to keep its head-pounding momentum, a tighter 90 minutes would have sufficed; dragging out its finale to constantly one-up itself with one mediocre joke after the other. At a certain point, not too long ago, a film such as Bullet Train may have felt fresh within the industry; now it feels like another generic endeavor that executives have figured out how to craft. This is a level of crowd-pleasing fare that feels no less creative to me than a majority of the MCU; don’t let the “rated-R” sensibilities fool you. Maybe I can revisit this one day and be less cynical about it all but, for now, it feels mediocre at best.
