Brad Pitt gets hired to steal a metal suitcase off a bullet train traveling through Japan. The briefcase is in the possession of two hired killers codenamed Tangerine and Lemon, who are supposed to return the briefcase and a drugged-out son to a big Yakuza boss called "The White Death." Does that mean he's made of cocaine, or saturated fats?
There's another guy on the train looking for the person who pushed his son off the roof, as well as that person, plus one other wild card. Shake them all up at 200 kilometers per hour (or however fast bullet trains go) and see what happens.
The movie reminds me of Hotel Artemis, in that it feels like it's trading heavily on a memorable setting and interesting characters, but a bit thin on plot. That's not necessarily a deal-breaker; I liked Hotel Artemis a lot, but it benefits from keeping things relatively short and sweet. It's 94 minutes long, but Bullet Train is 125 minutes. There was a point where most of the characters are dead, and the train itself is almost empty, that I thought the movie must be near the end.
Nope! 50 minutes to go. The movie slows down at that point for a lot of talking about the difference between fate and bad luck, and the fable about how a ladybug's spots carry the world's seven sorrows. Also flashbacks to explain why they're all there. It feels like there must have been a more organic way to convey that this is not some Guy Ritchie-esque series of coincidences.
I can't decide if the two masked Yakuza guys arguing about opening the case for a couple of minutes is just filler, or if it really does fit the tone of the movie. Considering Lemon keeps comparing people to character from Thomas the Tank Engine, because it was a formative experience in his childhood, or the killer who ends every, single, sentence, with the word "bitch", the whiny goons probably don't stand out.
That said, if this movie is built on style over substance, it is very stylish. The fight scenes are well choreographed and take advantage of the narrow confines and numerous obstructions of the train. It doesn't try to make Brad Pitt into some wildly athletic guy that he isn't at this point, and the way his character fights reflects his questioning whether this life is any good for him. He fights defensively, avoiding, obstructing, mostly using non-lethal weapons. There's a lot of punchy, quippy exchanges, characters arguing with each other or insulting one another. It makes for several funny moments, but that clashes with circumstances of the ending.
Without giving away too much, something happens which I would expect caused the deaths of dozens, if not hundreds, of dead innocent bystanders. Maybe I should have expected something like that, but it caught me off-guard. A lot of people had already died by then, but those were people involved in all this mess. This is a bunch of people just minding our own business. Netflix' description mentions Deadpool, which also has a pretty high body count, several of them treated as jokes ("You're gonna be killed by a Zamboni!").
But those are people involved in the organization that ruined Deadpool's life, who also run guns and drugs, sell humans, experiment on them, etc. They aren't innocent by any stretch. There's the scene on the highway, but I think the movie tries to suggest it's only the bad guys' SUV that wrecks, that everyone else is able to avoid the crash and then abandon their cars. Bullet Train doesn't show a bunch of corpses, so maybe I should assume no one else died, like how I was willing to roll with the notion the Incredible Hulk didn't kill anyone when he destroyed entire towns in the old comics.
But man, my first thought during that scene was, "Wow, that killed a lot of people."
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