At the very end of Bullet Train, a film about a speeding train filled with assassins that will eventually, and obligatorily, topple over and crash into buildings, we see a spectacular trainwreck that crunches cabins, dislocates passenger cars and sends commuters flying into the air.

One such passenger, whose flying head collides with a flying coffee pot, and whose body is cushioned by a giant, fluffy mascot suit, is Ladybug (Brad Pitt), a nonviolent assassin who doesn’t like guns (he takes them off villains every chance he gets).

The trainwreck at the end is the literal manifestation and sum up of Ladybug’s trip, from the moment he stepped into the bullet train. It is a trainwreck for everyone, including the audience, for whom the film derails at the 15-minute mark (Bullet Train has a running time of 126 minutes).

Brad Pitt is a hoot, and the rest of the cast are just about okay. The roster includes Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Andrew Koji, Hiroyuki Sanada, Benito A Martínez Ocasio, Zazie Beetz, Joey King, late arrivals Michael Shannon and Sandra Bullock, and almost cameo-ish turns by Logan Lerman, Karen Fukuhara, Masi Oka and Channing Tatum. However, the one actor who steals the film is Ryan Reynolds as the assassin Carver, whose unexpected three-second cameo trumps everyone.

Bullet Train may get its cult following sooner rather than later, because of its disparate set of unique-looking characters, but it’s a train-wreck of a film

The film is an adaptation of the Kōtarō Isaka’s Japanese novel Maria Beetle, whose English adaptation was simplified with the title Bullet Train. I don’t know the level of oversimplification the movie adaptation stoops to, because I’ve yet to open the pages of the book and delve into the divergences. Isaka does say in a statement that the casting was “ethnically malleable” (the characters in the original were Japanese, unsurprisingly).

Malleable might be the right word here, because the film has the unmistakable pliancy of bubblegum.

The bubblegum allegory seems to stick to Bullet Train quite easily. The film is designed to be chewed (ie. enjoyed), blown up into a bubble a few dozen times (ergo: the action sequences), and spit out (ie. forgotten), hoping that some of its makers’ creative choices might stick to fandom’s shoes.

I have little doubt that Bullet Train will get its cult following sooner rather than later, solely because of its disparate set of unique-looking characters.

Once you strip away the quirky designs that make these characters colourful, and perhaps not so menacing — all of these are bad guys, who are made to look like they’re the good guys — we realise that we’re actually seeing materialisations of uninteresting cartoons that seem to have taken life from the pages of a newly formed comic book company that wants a set of flamboyant, formulaic, superficial personalities to propagate their derivative stories (the frequency of such books, characters and stories is mind-boggling).

The screenplay by Zak Olkewicz is a badly written hack of Tarantino movies — namely Kill Bill — which, in turn, are often a homage to Japanese cinema and narrative culture.

Olkewicz sandwiches long passages of dialogues between action sequences. The conversations — and the intercuts into the past that add backstories — hardly pique one’s interest. The acting by Pitt and Taylor-Johnson, who seem to be having the time of their lives playing kooky characters, can only do so much to elevate a film that was meant to be stupid entertainment.

Director David Leitch, an esteemed stunt choreographer who graduated to direction with John Wick (which he co-directed), Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2 and Hobbs and Shaw, brings his uniquely uninteresting choreography of the camera and actors to the show. Between Olkewicz and Leitch, I had a hard time picking who to blame more for the farce on display.

While cliché can help set up the right pegs to tell an engaging story, the employment of sticking solely to them is a disservice to the story.

Neon lights, revenge, the clean, minimal, techy Japanese ambience both Kate and Bullet Train exploit only lead to the obvious conclusion: Hollywood is mostly inept when it comes to marrying Japanese aesthetics to the American blockbuster template.

Leave that job to the Luc Bessons (The Professional, Wasabi) or the Ridley Scotts of days gone (Blade Runner, Black Rain). The craft is zipping away from today’s filmmakers…at the speed of the Japanese Bullet Train.

Bullet Train, now playing in cinema screens, is released by Universal. It is rated R for action, decapitations and gallons of sprouting blood

Published in Dawn, ICON, August 14th, 2022