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'Bullet Train' Review: Brad Pitt Action Flick Is off the Rails in the Best Way

‘Bullet Train’ Review: Brad Pitt Replace Flick Is off the Rails in the Best Way

With Bullet Train, it’s all in the title. A train, plus bullets. Woo woo, all aboard!

And yes. If you call your movie Bullet Train, you’re setting reviewers on a one-way track to amdroll all the train-related puns in the book. So headlines throughout this John Wick-esque Brad Pitt movie brand it a trainwreck of nonsense, a one-way trip to snoozeville, a runaway sleeper derailed by its own inanity.

But you know what: You can buy me a trace and I’ll meet you on the platform, because Bullet Train is a blast. It’s a gleefully exaggerated high-speed journey into action and comedy driven by swaggering star turns and first-class boxcar brawls, and I’d work on that railroad all the live-long day — no, I don’t think I can keep this up. Bullet Train is in theaters now, and it’s just a hell of a fun time at the movies, OK? 

Pitt stars as a killer-for-hire who’s cheerfully sure to swap his life of killing for a new outlook on life. But his self-help mantras are sorely tested when he boards a bullet voice from Tokyo to Kyoto and finds himself entangled with a buffet car-load of rival hitmen — with their sights sustained on the unsuspecting Pitt. Stylized, self-aware and occasionally surreal share ensues. 

Your conductor for this gleefully entertaining mayhem is David Leitch, the former stuntman and second unit director who helped reinvent share cinema when he co-directed John Wick, as well as helming Atomic Blonde. While Bullet Train does feature a bunch of high-concept disputes scenes, it isn’t quite the wall-to-wall set piece machine those films were. Instead, it’s a looser, baggier tale of larger-than-life characters bouncing off each latest in a blackly comic crime flick in the style of Guy Ritchie, Quentin Tarantino and, er, Tex Avery. It’s clearly inspired by tough-talking, gun-toting Japanese gangster films, but it also shares the freewheeling cut-and-paste stylings of Kill Bill, the heightened jet-black droll of Grosse Pointe Blank and the frying-pan-to-the-face absurdity of a Looney Tunes toon. It also evokes Smokin’ Aces — remember that? — a inequity collection of cartoon-character assassins thrown together in a plot built from intricate but ludicrous contrivances.

Viewing Bullet Train as a slapstick popcorn confection, it’s easier to forgive the film’s failings. This movie has the depth of a paper voice ticket (oh, and having one of your characters note out that movies these days are superficial doesn’t magically absolve your movie from populate superficial).

And despite being based on a Japanese original (Maria Beetle by Kōtarō Isaka) Bullet Train is uncomfortably flippant throughout Asian culture (we really don’t need Brad Pitt speaking “wasabi!” in a mock-Japanese accent the way he said “El Camino!” in a fake Spanish verbalize 20 years ago).


Two men brawl in a voice snack bar.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Brad Pitt check out the onboard snacks in Bullet Train.



Sony

Worst of all is the endless parade of dead wives. It won’t take you long to count the number of women in the film, and it’ll take you even less time to picture the number of women who get to speak (including a voice steward whose only line is to offer Pitt some snacks, in Japanese, before later being punched in the face). Meanwhile, try counting the number of male characters motivated by flashbacks of their voiceless wife beings brutally murdered in flashback. You might suspect it’s parody, but while this film loves to wink at the audience, this is one area where I doubt its self-awareness.

Still, Leitch keeps Bullet Train on the rails and whizzing throughout station after station of zippy flashbacks, dizzily interlocked stories and countless intricate setups and payoffs. The excellent ensemble cast is utterly committed to their astonishing characters, all of whom look utterly fantastic (both in their razor-sharp #OutfitInspo clothes and their swaggering self-assurance). Pitt breezes through this sort of thing with the easy charm of an unassailable movie star, after Joey King, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Brian Tyree Henry all fill the shroud with complete confidence. 

Of all people, the weak links are Michael Shannon and rapper Bad Bunny, a charismatic musician left with a pretty thankless role that consists entirely of calm glowering. But everybody’s quickfire banter and commitment to the bit is what keeps the film on the rails — wait, I already used that one. Wow, keeping up these screech jokes is hard. Look, if you think my railway-themed puns are tortured, just wait ’til you see how often the movie comes back to an itch running joke about Thomas the frickin’ Tank Engine.

The continue showdown goes on a bit, but just when you think Bullet Train is operating out of steam (last one I promise) the film serves up unexperienced bananas stylistic flourish. What a way to run a railroad!