BULLET TRAIN
***
Director: David Leitch
Screenplay: Zac Olkewicz, based on the Japanese novel Maria Beetle by Kotaro Isaka (English title Bullet Train).
Principal cast:
Brad Pitt
Joey King
Aaron Taylor-Johnson
Brian Tyree Henry
Andrew Koji
Hiroyuki Sanada
Country: Japan/USA
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 126 mins.
Australian release date: 4 August 2022.
There are two things you should know before going to see the new Brad Pitt actioner, Bullet Train. The first is that, in a kind of meta nod to characters in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, the director, David Leitch, has a long association with Pitt as his stunt double (on films like Fight Club, Ocean’s Eleven, Troy and Mr. and Mrs. Smith); plus, Pitt had a cameo role in Leitch’s second feature Deadpool 2. What this tells you is that there are going to be many, many fight scenes in the film. The second thing to know is that the source novel is a blackly comedic, high-octane, Japanese thriller, so you can anticipate a significant amount of almost cartoonish violence. In some scenes, I half-expected sound effect bubbles saying Zap! and Pow! to pop up on screen, á la the Batman television series of the Sixties. Once you’re aware of those things, you can understand why the collaboration between actor and director is so tight when they take you on this exhilarating ride on one of the fastest trains in the world, the Japanese Shinkansen. If you have ever had the opportunity to travel on one of these trains, you will know how thrilling it feels. If you haven’t, this movie is the next best thing.
Ladybug (Brad Pitt) is an assassin who’s feeling down on his luck and he’s not real happy when his female handler gives him a job that she calls “simple” - stealing a briefcase on a bullet train bound for Kyoto. He’s been seeing a therapist and he wants to turn his violent past around, even to the point of refusing to carry a gun on this mission. Unbeknown to Ladybug, however, he’s not the only one hunting for the attaché case and he gradually realises that he is one of many hired killers who’ve been engaged to pull of the same heist. It also starts to dawn on him that these hit-men and women can’t all be on the train by accident and there’s more to this “simple” job than meets the eye. A lot more.
Pitt is as chilled and charismatic as always as he delivers his tongue-in cheek lines, many of which are spoken over the phone to his handler as he wrestles with his new-found conscience while violently battling assorted assassins. Some of the funniest passages are when he endeavours to spout the new-age aphorisms about peace and love that he’s half-remembered from his therapy sessions. The actor must have learnt a lot from watching Leitch over the years, too, because he performed most of his own stunts apparently. The director describes Bullet Train as having “… a tone of relentless fun and snappy dialogue. But the most important thing to me was that it had well-defined characters that gave the actors a lot to chew on. It’s a fun action-thriller with crazy, bombastic characters - and it’s a meditation on fate. Really.” Not all of the characters are as well-defined as he might like, although Pitt’s Ladybug certainly has a lot to chew on, as do Japanese actors Hiroyuki Sanada and Andrew Koji as father and son and Brian Tyree Henry and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as brothers wrestling with the importance of family in matters of life and death. Indeed, familial love and loss are the threads that bind all these disparate characters together.
The movie has been criticised in some quarters for casting Anglo actors in most of the key roles while keeping the book’s Japanese setting but the author, Kotaro Isaka, has said that he doesn’t have a problem with that decision, describing his characters as “ethnically malleable.” Each viewer will have to make up his or her own mind on that score and I suspect that it will largely depend on one’s familiarity with the original novel. For his part, Isaka says his creations are “not real people, maybe they're not even Japanese.”
Leitch has once again called upon the talents of his ‘go-to’ Director of Photography Jonathan Sela for his latest film and it looks a treat. Bullet Train is as shiny and polished as a real Shinkansen. Unlike the real deal, however, it takes a while to get going but, when it picks up speed, it’s a rush all the way to its destination.
Screenplay: Zac Olkewicz, based on the Japanese novel Maria Beetle by Kotaro Isaka (English title Bullet Train).
Principal cast:
Brad Pitt
Joey King
Aaron Taylor-Johnson
Brian Tyree Henry
Andrew Koji
Hiroyuki Sanada
Country: Japan/USA
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 126 mins.
Australian release date: 4 August 2022.
There are two things you should know before going to see the new Brad Pitt actioner, Bullet Train. The first is that, in a kind of meta nod to characters in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, the director, David Leitch, has a long association with Pitt as his stunt double (on films like Fight Club, Ocean’s Eleven, Troy and Mr. and Mrs. Smith); plus, Pitt had a cameo role in Leitch’s second feature Deadpool 2. What this tells you is that there are going to be many, many fight scenes in the film. The second thing to know is that the source novel is a blackly comedic, high-octane, Japanese thriller, so you can anticipate a significant amount of almost cartoonish violence. In some scenes, I half-expected sound effect bubbles saying Zap! and Pow! to pop up on screen, á la the Batman television series of the Sixties. Once you’re aware of those things, you can understand why the collaboration between actor and director is so tight when they take you on this exhilarating ride on one of the fastest trains in the world, the Japanese Shinkansen. If you have ever had the opportunity to travel on one of these trains, you will know how thrilling it feels. If you haven’t, this movie is the next best thing.
Ladybug (Brad Pitt) is an assassin who’s feeling down on his luck and he’s not real happy when his female handler gives him a job that she calls “simple” - stealing a briefcase on a bullet train bound for Kyoto. He’s been seeing a therapist and he wants to turn his violent past around, even to the point of refusing to carry a gun on this mission. Unbeknown to Ladybug, however, he’s not the only one hunting for the attaché case and he gradually realises that he is one of many hired killers who’ve been engaged to pull of the same heist. It also starts to dawn on him that these hit-men and women can’t all be on the train by accident and there’s more to this “simple” job than meets the eye. A lot more.
Pitt is as chilled and charismatic as always as he delivers his tongue-in cheek lines, many of which are spoken over the phone to his handler as he wrestles with his new-found conscience while violently battling assorted assassins. Some of the funniest passages are when he endeavours to spout the new-age aphorisms about peace and love that he’s half-remembered from his therapy sessions. The actor must have learnt a lot from watching Leitch over the years, too, because he performed most of his own stunts apparently. The director describes Bullet Train as having “… a tone of relentless fun and snappy dialogue. But the most important thing to me was that it had well-defined characters that gave the actors a lot to chew on. It’s a fun action-thriller with crazy, bombastic characters - and it’s a meditation on fate. Really.” Not all of the characters are as well-defined as he might like, although Pitt’s Ladybug certainly has a lot to chew on, as do Japanese actors Hiroyuki Sanada and Andrew Koji as father and son and Brian Tyree Henry and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as brothers wrestling with the importance of family in matters of life and death. Indeed, familial love and loss are the threads that bind all these disparate characters together.
The movie has been criticised in some quarters for casting Anglo actors in most of the key roles while keeping the book’s Japanese setting but the author, Kotaro Isaka, has said that he doesn’t have a problem with that decision, describing his characters as “ethnically malleable.” Each viewer will have to make up his or her own mind on that score and I suspect that it will largely depend on one’s familiarity with the original novel. For his part, Isaka says his creations are “not real people, maybe they're not even Japanese.”
Leitch has once again called upon the talents of his ‘go-to’ Director of Photography Jonathan Sela for his latest film and it looks a treat. Bullet Train is as shiny and polished as a real Shinkansen. Unlike the real deal, however, it takes a while to get going but, when it picks up speed, it’s a rush all the way to its destination.