Bullet Train

Oct 3, 2022

The cinema, it goes without saying, supplies itself with literature to tell stories from its own codes. That is why I find it tedious to insist on the differences between David Leitch's highly entertaining film and the novel on which it is inspired, Bullet Train, by Kōtarō Isaka. Although some critics suggest, almost automatically, that the entire cast should be Japanese, and therefore faithful to Isaka's idea, I believe that Brad Pitt, Joey King, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Andrew Koji, and Hiroyuki Sanada exclude other alternatives. Each one of them is unbeatable in their role, as well as other well-known performers (I will not reveal their names) who enjoy their respective cameos to the fullest.

Is Bullet Train a good movie? If your standards have been modulated thanks to popular cinema, it certainly is. This film lives up to the expectations it generates and offers us a generous, well-balanced cocktail of humor, accelerated violence, ingenuity, and Japanese stereotypes. Leitch's doctrine is the same as Tarantino's: both find emotion in the most humble subgenres and reinvent them, rescuing them from cynicism or paralyzing nostalgia. In this sense, Bullet Train accumulates a thousand and one known ingredients ‒Jackie Chan's impossible choreographies, Buster Keaton's physical humor, chambara swordsmen, shojo manga lolitas, yakuza professional gunmen, and other nods to otakus. of yesterday and today‒ to then ensure our complicity with a product that exudes sympathy, black humor, and ingenuity.

All the action takes place aboard a high-speed Japanese bullet train, the typical shinkansen, on which a few rather colorful hit men travel, whose stories will intersect dangerously.

Something has the closed space of a train for so many movies to be dedicated to it. In Bullet Train, this microcosm becomes a territory where redemption, revenge, defeat, bad luck, and other equally exhilarating stimuli are staged. It gives the impression that the director understands that any hint of drama must be lightened, and that is why he shakes the staging with a frenzy inherited from cartoons and classic martial arts cinema.

Thanks to coordinator Greg Rementer and Leitch himself (a stuntman turned director, co-founder of the stunt company 87Eleven), the action scenes reach a superlative level. That packaging of fights and chases shows the characteristic stamp of other films by the director, such as Atomic (2017), Deadpool 2 (2018), and Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw (2019).

As far as the script is concerned, Bullet Train also seems to take place in the same universe - or one very similar - that hosts other 87Eleven products, such as Nobody (2021) or the John Wick saga. Undoubtedly, this family atmosphere places us in a very welcoming space, I would almost say recognizable, with the added guarantee that we will leave the room with a smile.

Synopsis

Two-time Academy Award® winner Brad Pitt (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Ad Astra, Fight Club) leads an all-star cast that is completed by Aaron Taylor Johnson (Nowhere Boy, Kick-Ass, Nocturnal Animals), Joey King (My First Kiss), Brian Tyree Henry (Godzilla vs. Kong, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse), Andrew Koji (Snake Eyes: Origins), Hiroyuki Sanada (Life), Michael Shannon (The Shape of Water, Daggers in the back), Benito A. Martínez Ocasio “Bad Bunny” and the also Oscar winner Sandra Bullock (The Lost City, Gravity).

Based on the novel Maria Beetle by Japanese writer Kōtarō Isaka, Bullet Train is a cinematic event, a hilarious and wacky action thriller in which Brad Pitt leads a cast of diverse and eclectic assassins – all connected by conflicting goals. – inside a non-stop journey through modern Japan.

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