Based on the novel by Kôtarô Isaka, David Leitch’s Bullet Train takes its name from the high-speed rail network connecting Tokyo to Kyoto. The title is also suggestive of the violent mayhem that ensues on board one train carrying numerous assassins with conflicting agendas. Replete with disarmingly tender flashbacks into characters’ histories and humorous, digressive asides, the narrative is constructed with the same level of verve and craft that Leitch brings to his motif-laden and often neon-drenched action sequences.
One of the colorful, seasoned assassins aboard the train is named Ladybug (Brad Pitt), whose life of crime and perceived strings of bad luck has driven him to therapy. While hired to retrieve a mysterious briefcase, Ladybug becomes entangled with other criminals on jobs that may be connected to his, such as the bantering British duo of Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry), as well as the Prince (Joey King), whose innocent schoolgirl appearance masks a depraved Machiavellian mastermind. But to say that the various characters simply converge would be an understatement, given the lengths that Leitch and screenwriter Zak Olkewicz go to in spinning elaborate gags from the convergences.
In keeping with the assassins’ concerns over what fate has in store for them, Bullet Train abounds in misdirection, with MacGuffins being understood as such—and violently so—in one plotline after being subtly introduced in an earlier one. From a vial of sleeping powder whose potency causes Ladybug to be unsure of how much to administer it, to a missing venomous snake referenced in a TV report, the punchlines to these setups make for a sustained series of giddy narrative twists that sustain the film’s wildly entertaining momentum.
Elsewhere, Leitch displays a deft technical hand across the film’s action scenes, many of which, through crisp editing and sinuous camera movements, are redolent of old-fashioned comedy routines. One of the more enjoyable set pieces in Bullet Train is a fight between Ladybug and Lemon in the train’s quiet car, where they each scramble for the upper hand while also trying to stay as silent as possible so as not to rankle the other passengers.
It’s fair to say that Bullet Train eventually goes off the rails, as the film’s climax is so indulgently bombastic and suffocated by snark that it bears little resemblance to the sophisticated and seamless blend of action and comedy that preceded it. But the denouement’s grandiosity is also perfectly rationalized in a telling moment where Ladybug, offering his thoughts on his experiences on board the bullet train, says, “Hurt people hurt people.” The mantra-like line is intended as a moment of levity in a particularly precarious situation, but it also serves as a neat encapsulation of the characters as a whole.
Throughout, Bullet Train proves that it has a heart beneath all the blood and carnage whenever it briefly pivots its narrative lens to explore the complicated lives of its characters. The common thread uniting these people is that either violence has taken an emotional toll on them or their actions stem from traumas that they’re unable to reconcile or rationally confront. And it’s via these empathetic characterizations that Bullet Train pulls off its most notable feat by daring to make human beings out of cartoonishly violent psychopaths.
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