Movie Reaction: Bullet Train

Formula: Free Fire * Pulp Fiction

Bullet Train is a strange movie in that on paper, I love nearly everything about it. It’s a bumbling criminal movie. I love movies that deflate the invincible assassin myth. It’s a movie set in a confined space. I often talk about my love of movies like Free Fire that put a lot of good actors/characters in one place then see how they bounce off each other. It’s an accomplished action movie. It’s directed by Dave Leitch, who has quickly established himself as one of the premier action directors in Hollywood thanks to his stunt background. It’s a movie that plays with time structure and plotting like a giant puzzle. Going back to how favorably I talked about Dorm Daze, I have a deep respect for a movie that needed a flow chart to write it. Lastly, fun cast. Yet, something held me back from fully embracing the movie.

 

Let me back up. Bullet Train is about a reformed assassin, codename Ladybug (Brad Pitt), who takes what he assumes is a harmless job: he has to take a briefcase from a bullet train and leave at the next stop. This is a movie and not a short film though, so you can guess that things go wildly awry. It turns out there are several other assassins on the train with conflicting orders. There’s a kidnapped warlord’s son, a poisonous snake, and more vendettas than you can shake a poisonous snake at. The movie is quick to jump to a montage of a past mission or interactions that led to a specific moment in the film. It’s a very chaotic movie in a way that I really should eat up.

 

Most of the enjoyment of the movie comes from the really eclectic cast. Brad Pitt over the years has figured out that he can be funny by being less competent than his good looks would imply. Historically, a leading man with his looks and screen presence only got roles with dignity. The fun of Ladybug is that he’s a mess. He feels bad about his past actions and is obsessed with what his therapist says. He only survives the film because of luck, which the film calls out repeatedly. I enjoyed him a lot in this, although his character does often feel like a passenger in the movie: someone to have things happen around. I like the brother assassins played by Bryan Tyree Henry and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Henry’s fascination with Thomas and Friends actually plays a substantial role in the film. Joey King plays a young assassin who, let’s be honest, mostly functions as a sight gag for most of the film: someone to put on the poster to show how eclectic the cast is. She’s good though. Bad Bunny is in this. Apparently, he’s a thing in the music world. Really, there’s just a lot of cast in this, including a few surprises or hiding in plain sight cameos. Remember, this is from the same director who put together a crew for Deadpool 2, put them in the advertising, and had them make press appearances, only to kill them off early in the film as a joke. That’s how you should look at the casting in this.

 

As an action movie, this is unsurprisingly successful and over the top. Leitch stages several good fight scenes and uses the location to his advantage. For example, the Pitt/Henry fight in the quiet car of the train has been all over the advertising. There’s a lot of that, and with the ridiculousness of the premise, there’s a “go for broke” attitude to the whole thing, where nothing feels off limits.

 

I think the main reason the movie didn’t work as well for me as it should’ve is overstimulation. This movie throws a lot at the audience. It’s a bit like watching a PowerPoint presentation that uses all the different slide transitions. It’s not just enough for a character to be odd. He also has to dress distinctively, and he has to get a colorful cut away to his background, and he gets a bizarre interest, and something odd happens to him unconnected to the rest of the things. The movie often feels like the film equivalent of using 20 words when 5 would do.

 

I’m not sure where I land on the film’s use of luck. It’s a recurring motif if not explicit reference throughout the film. Some characters believe they are naturally lucky. Other believe the opposite. Several beats of the story or fortuitous breaks get attributed to luck. I do appreciate the film calling that out. That’s better than not acknowledging it at all. It still feels a bit like a narrative cheat. I get annoyed when someone write themselves out of a corner by having something lucky happen. It’s lazy writing. I thought Leitch’s Deadpool 2 had a smart and playful use of luck with the Domino character. He seems to have doubled-down on it here and it didn’t work as well.

 

Ultimately, I did like the movie. It’s fun. Good cast. Good action. I respect any filmmaker trying something ambitious like this over taking the easy path. I’m only annoyed that I could see the outline of a film I would love in this and I didn’t quite get it. Who knows? Maybe this is one of those movies that I’ll see again one day and like a lot more because I can focus on the actual product and not the potential.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend