‘Bullet Train’ review: Brad Pitt’s actioner is fun, but misses that secret sauce

Watching Bullet Train brings a lot of awful train puns to mind:off the tracks, derailed, crazy train… you get the idea. However, Bullet Train is not at all a bad film; in fact, it has a lot going for it including a glittering cast and some utterly mind-blowing action sequences. What is missing is that secret sauce that elevates all the jolly, jiggling pieces into a tight, coherent whole.

There is a lot happening on this bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto. There is a grieving father, Yuichi Kimura (Andrew Koji) bent on taking revenge on the person who critically injured his son by pushing him off the roof. There is Ladybug (Brad Pitt), an assassin, who has found new purpose in life after his therapist, Barry, showed him the way. Ladybug is on the train to retrieve a suitcase.

Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry) are the twin British assassins who are escorting a scary gangster’s son, (Logan Lerman) after rescuing him from gangsters who had the temerity to kidnap him. There is a Mexican gangster The Wolf (Benito A Martínez Ocasio), who is also bent on revenge, a boomslang snake on the loose, another assassin named Hornet (Zazie Beetz), and a schoolgirl named Prince (Joey King) who might not be all that innocent.

Things happen throughout the movie with the kinetic, explosive action that we have come to expect from David Leitch, who after cutting his directorial teeth on John Wick, went to direct some high-octane actioners like Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, and Hobbs & Shaw.

Pitt’s lazy dude charm grows on you as does Taylor-Johnson and Tyree Henry’s back and forth about the life lessons from Thomas the Tank Engine. The cameos including Channing Tatum as a random passenger on the train, Sandra Bullock as Ladybug’s handler, Ryan Reynolds playing yet another assassin, and Karen Fukuhara as concessions girl on the train are all-round fun.

Based on Kōtarō Isaka’s 2010 novel Maria Beetle, Bullet Train came in for criticism for casting non-Asian actors for the Japanese characters from the novel.

The movie seems to be a mash-up of all its different inspirations including John Woo’s slow motion (where are the pigeons?), the mythical bad guy White Death (Michael Shannon), Tarantino’s chatty crooks, with the mysterious briefcase providing the perfect MacGuffin and impeccable tailoring courtesy John Wick.

In the bullet train, everything and everyone has a story, from the gangster, to the assassin, right down to a bottle of water and sometimes it all just becomes too much… and you just want to get off at the next station. Incidentally, the 1975 Japanese film about a bomb on a bullet train is called The Bullet Train.

Bullet Train is currently running in theatres