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“Bullet Train” is an action movie that might as well have been animated and for the most part looks and feels like one. The action unfolds on a bullet train speeding through Japan nevertheless much of the film was filmed on green-screens and the accompanying cityscapes and countryside miniature sets. The characters are unrealistically comic bookish and are paid assassins or other lowlife criminals and thugs. Most of them harbor hatred towards one another while seeking to evade the repercussions of their violent actions in the past. Their storylines are either purely sinister or extremely tragic-sentimental. 30 years after the realignment in the early nineties by Tarantino, most of them openly take center stage as the talkative characters. The film’s tone mixes a winking black comedy together with poker-faced pulp.
Ladybug is played by Brad Pitt, an ex-assassin who is given orders to take over the train, grab the briefcase and disembark.
His next target is a different assassin who was on the task but became unavailable. He is unfamiliar with guns and denies the assassin’s recommendation to get one, stating that he has eliminated the need for murder after anger management. A Ladybug is accompanied by a group of murderers that are a bunch of psychopathic bombers. Joey King plays an innocent girl ‘The Prince’ who is so disgusted by what she perceives men to be, that she disguises herself as a schoolgirl. Then, in an instant, Barbara transforms into an intelligence- weapon of precision. Brothers Brian Tyree Henry and Aaron Taylor Johnson, who have been groomed to be the evil, violent Begbie from the original “Trainspotting,” are on a new mission where their last body count was alienated in the triple-digit range. The two brothers are now riding a train, on a mission to protect a briefcase, where Logan Lerman, a vacant son of a terrifying crime lord known as White Death, is their new charge.
White Death is a former Kun who captured a Japanese Yakuza family and merged it with his own.
He does not show his face until the very end of the story, which serves as a treat for the audience. As a result, they are more inclined to avoid searching on Google who portrays him. His casting is without a doubt one of the best surprises of the entire movie. Hiroyuki Sanada portrays the white death’s grey and undeniably lethal assassin known as The Elder. Also, Andrew Koji plays The Father, who, as expected, is the Elder’s son. The pair is in search of revenge because someone knocked The Elder’s grandson from the rooftop of a department store, leaving him in a coma. One can only wonder if the person responsible is blending in with the other agents of death on the train.
The plot of the movie seems to be objective based, centered on the comatose grandson and the metallic briefcase. However, as new fighters are introduced to the story, the script establishes that they all have an elusive connection or puzzle, which essentially transforms Bullet Train into a half-hearted, yet earnest commentary. It depicts fate, luck and karma. To Ladybug, who serves as a rather annoying comic relief, it seems like his comments on those topics constantly trying to make sense of how the movie plot serves its “true” purpose.
(Ladybug is sort of an avuncular post-credits version of Jules from “Pulp Fiction,” who has seemingly denounced violence. However, he continues to be entrenched in the life, and it has gotten even harder because he has made a vow to never touch a firearm again.) Characters get elaborate typeface-on-screen-followed-by-flashback-montage introductions that many genre addicts will be familiar with thanks to directors such as Quentin Tarantino (“Kill Bill” is a major influence) and Guy Ritchie (who was the original lad’s ‘action’ film director in which language became verbal fisticuffs or knives used against the opposition). The fighters go forth to literally pound one another with guns, blades, fists, feet, and so many other things within their reach (the briefcase is used both as a shield and a bludgeon, so it is definitely getting a workout). They engage in verbal tussles while battling. When one of their souls departs for the afterlife, the film’s mood will tend to switch into an overly sentimental form of grieving that is somewhat touching because of the cast’s talent, but to the entire picture is still too glib and shallow.
The movie is produced by David Leitch who used to be a stunt double for Jean Claude Van Damme, and on this movie a double for Brad Pitt, and also the ex-director of Chad Stahleski, who was responsible for “John Wick.” He has now specialized in high-grade arms futurism having written and authored “Deadpool 2” and other blockbuster hits such as “Atomic Blonde” and “Fast & Furious Presents Hobbs & Shaw.” There is little doubt that he is one of the best when it comes to controlling this kind of entertainment, and it is a treat to see how “Bullet Train” indulges in some of its more absurdly freakish imagery, like the drugged-out vision of “Speed Racer.”
However, whether this kind of project is worth it or not is a question for another day. “This is all light and silly and none of it is of any consequence,” he tells us, while simultaneously attempting to choke us with a dramatic power so we empathize with the characters. Henry, thank you, and Taylor-Johnson, your story gets there. It is clear that love is expressed between the brothers, even when they’re breaking each other’s chops. And the two actors, despite having Cockney accents that might not pass muster in a college production of My Fair Lady, give performances that have direct connections with the audience. (The greatest achievement in this film is that Henry manages to get you to not loathe the gimmick on general principle.)
But the rest shifts feels off and fake. ‘Bullet Train’ is most successful when it is a comedy with self styled badasses who are running free, but who are, in fact, mere passengers on a train traveling from one station to another without any individual on board caring where a particular person on the train wants to go.
However, the non-specific nature of it all and ‘everything is just a joke’ humor dilutes areas of the viewer’s imagination that could otherwise sprout.
There is an additional form of abstraction in the project: its script was adapted from a Japanese novel by Kōtarō Isaka, so the characters were Japanese. Leitch and these people – who took over this project from Antoine Fuqua, who envisioned making a ‘Die Hard on a Train’, but with less humor – have attempted to “recast” the story, so to say, internationally, starting with Leitch’s everlasting screen grin Pitt. They are said to have thought about moving the setting of the story closer to Europe, but in the end, they would still have the Japanese setting, and justified this by stating that ‘Bullet Train’ is a fictional movie which can be placed anywhere, and in fact, takes place nowhere.
The explanation does not make sense because ‘Bullet Train’ aims at the Japanese visuals signified. It insists on a character like King as an anime ‘schoolgirl’ and obliterates each and every one of the main characters with the exception of a few cookie-cutter Yakuza. A Yakuza character is portrayed as a Russian chieftan modeled after Keyser Soze from The Usual Suspects. Even in fiction, the film seems quite overboard. Even if there is no reality in the movie which there isn’t for the purpose of creativity, the actors make it real, then the explanation is inaccurate. Why not go all in and complete the green screen immersion and put it in a future setting on a different planet or an alternate dimension? At this point, it’s basically a Marvel movie, but the superheroes can’t return after dying. This may have come out as a disturbing masterpiece rather than a semi-advanced emotional pile of work.
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