While reading various opinions given by famous critics about the movie “Bullet Train”, I've come to understand that people these days watch cinema how they want to, not how the directors, screenplay writers, and all the other team members who made the film want the audience to watch it as. It's okay to watch it however you want, through the glass of realism, or completely in reverse. But what I don't understand is why to take entertainment so seriously. Different movies from different genres are made for and appeal to different audiences. As long as it has an appeal, saying that those movies should not get produced in the first place is appalling, to say the least. That's my two cents on that.
Now, Bullet Train as a movie offers nothing of what we have not watched before except through mindless entertainment. It is not a movie that gives you life-changing messages or talks about the problems with humanity nor is it made for that purpose. It is simply a “pay for laughs” film, nothing more, nothing less. Its comic book/ anime-ish looks and feels come from its Japanese origin. It's a half-and-half adaptation of a black comedy novel Called “Maria Beetle”. Its story pivots around assassins as central characters who have boarded a train and all have different missions which intersect at points. And at every one of those intersections, chaos ensues.
The fulcrum of the story is a former assassin “Ladybug”(Brad Pitt), who recently has renounced violence due to anger management issues and now does simple pickup jobs. He constantly bickers about how bad luck chases him everywhere he goes and it makes the simplest of tasks very complex for him. By the end of the movie, you'd realize it's the other way around. The train is crawling with many other assassins. Lemon and Tangerine are assassin brothers who have a triple-digit murder count trailing them. They are in charge of protecting the apparently depressed son of a serious Yakuza crime boss, The “White Death” and a briefcase full of his money. Several other assassins and characters on the train are related to crime one way or the other, except for two of the train staff and Channing Tatum, whose cameo was there to deliver a not-so-funny sex joke. But I guess the cameo was the main focal point.
Despite everything the other reviews say, I think Bullet Train is a very clever movie. It delivers exactly what it promises. Early on in the movie, Assassin Lemon of the brotherly duo, who is obsessed with Thomas The Tank Engine and is hell-bent on characterizing everyone as the engines seen on the show, says, “Twists, Violence, Drama, no message… What are we supposed to learn?” And that is exactly what this film is. It knows what we want, and gives us that. A mix of a fast-paced, subtly unrealistic, yet forcefully made real storyline, with some average humor, a high-value star cast, CGI that looks aesthetically pleasing, and the usual tropes that make films a summer blockbuster. Yep, I'm talking about The Fast and Furious and all the other franchises that have managed to kill cinema. “Bullet Train” celebrates that death in its own way.
It's also clever in terms of how Director David Leitch, a former famous stuntman, now an upcoming director manages to choreograph arbitrary hand-to-hand fight scenes quite entertainingly inside a narrow space such as a train. Also, his attention to detail. From the briefcase to a water bottle, if its part of the main plot, gets their own screen time, with their own story. Many of you might not know who Leitch is, but you surely know Deadpool 2, Hobbs and Shaw, and John Wick. He is the next Guy Ritchie(Sherlock Holmes 1,2, The Man from U.N.C.L.E) of Hollywood In terms of a director with their own style on old, cliched, and niche fast-paced action tropes. The thing with such productions would be that they never deserve a sequel yet one gets made and becomes a hit as there is nothing better left to watch for an average viewer that summer. And as for you, if you have an empty playlist, Bullet Train maybe able to fill that void.
