It’s hard to upstage Brad Pitt when he’s mugging it so beautifully as a frequently stupefied hitman. Operating under the nom de guerre Ladybug, Pitt’s mercenary is prone to contemplating the Meaning of Life while attempting to filch a briefcase full of cash that doesn’t belong to him.
Pitt’s competition in Bullet Train is two-fold. Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Brian Tyree Henry are in cracking form as the assassins Tangerine and Lemon. They call each “brothers”, but we know better.
David Leitch’s Bullet Train wants to be more than a parade of mayhem that unfolds mostly on Japan’s high-speed Shinkansen railway line. The film proudly defies the network’s impeccable reputation for safety of both vehicle and passenger.
Set on board a train dashing from Tokyo to Kyoto with a limited number of stops, the movie has top-notch action and a striking visual scheme – only to be expected from the co-director of the first John Wick film and the director of Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2 and Hobbs & Shaw. It’s in the placeholder scenes linking the point of contact between weapon and body that Bullet Train goes off the rails.
This Snatch on wheels, adapted by Zak Olkewicz from Kotara Isaka’s Japanese novel Maria Beetle, has three characters with thick British accents and plenty of chit-chat between the carnage. Apart from Tangerine and Lemon, The…