- UK release: August 2022
- Director: David Leitch · Writer: Zak Olkewicz
- Studio / distributor: Columbia Pictures; 87North Productions; Fuqua Films
- Genre: Action comedy / assassin thriller · Runtime: 127 minutes (BBFC 15)
- Main cast: Brad Pitt (Fight Club, Inglourious Basterds) as Ladybug; Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kick-Ass, Tenet) as Tangerine; Brian Tyree Henry (If Beale Street Could Talk) as Lemon; Joey King (The Kissing Booth) as The Prince; Hiroyuki Sanada (The Last Samurai, 47 Ronin) as The Elder
- Rotten Tomatoes: 54% critics / 76% audience · My rating: 9 / 10
David Leitch came up doing the thing nobody watches the credits for. He was a stuntman, then a fight coordinator, then half of the directing team that made John Wick move like a dancer with a grudge. Since going solo he has been steadily loosening the screws: Atomic Blonde was sleek and serious, Deadpool 2 was a gag machine with a body count. Bullet Train is where he stops pretending to be serious at all. It is a film about professional killers on a train, adapted from a Japanese novel, shot like a comic book and pitched somewhere between a heist and a farce, and it is the most fun I have had in a cinema this year.
The setup
Ladybug (Brad Pitt) is an assassin trying to reform, all therapy-speak and bad luck, handed a job his handler swears is simple: board the Tokyo to Kyoto bullet train, grab a briefcase, get off. He is barely seated before it becomes clear that half the carriages are carrying other killers, all of them circling the same case, the same crime boss, and a tangle of grudges that turns out to be one knot rather than several. The train will not stop, the bodies start to mount, and Ladybug spends the whole journey trying to find a station, any station, where he can simply get off. It is a single-location thriller with the location moving at two hundred miles an hour.
The cast
Pitt is having a wonderful time, and his comic timing has only sharpened with age. Ladybug is a man permanently appalled at the violence breaking out around him, and Pitt plays the exasperation beautifully. The film, though, belongs to the double act of Tangerine and Lemon, two British hitmen who bicker like an old married couple. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is all swagger and threat as Tangerine; Brian Tyree Henry’s Lemon reads people through the moral universe of Thomas the Tank Engine, and somehow makes that the smartest character study in the film. Joey King is genuinely chilling as a teenager who weaponises everyone’s assumptions about teenagers, and Hiroyuki Sanada arrives late with the gravitas the chaos has been quietly waiting for. The ensemble clicks, which is the whole game in a film like this.
The craft
Leitch shoots Japan as pure neon dream, all candy colour and chrome, the carriages each given their own palette so you always know where you are even as the cutting accelerates. Jonathan Sela’s camera and Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir’s editing keep the geography legible through fights staged in spaces the width of a corridor, which is harder than it looks and a discipline Leitch carries over from his stunt years. The action has weight and wit, a bottle of water and a quiet carriage become running gags, and Dominic Lewis scores it with Japanese-language covers of Western pop that should be insufferable and instead land perfectly. It is loud, busy and overstuffed by design, a film that would rather give you too much than too little.
How it stacks up
The lineage is easy to trace. This is Snatch on rails, Guy Ritchie’s interlocking-criminals structure married to the choreography of John Wick and the gallows comedy of Smokin’ Aces. The single-train premise invites Murder on the Orient Express, though Leitch is far less interested in whodunit than in who-survives. There is Kill Bill in the candy-coloured violence and the relish for a good flashback. What it borrows it earns, and the flashback-and-coincidence machinery, the kind of plotting where a stolen briefcase three scenes ago detonates now, is built with real care under the noise.
Critics versus the rest of us
Critics are lukewarm, sitting just over half on Rotten Tomatoes, and the recurring complaint is that the film is exhausting, too long, too pleased with itself, too many characters doing too many bits. Audiences are notably warmer at 76%, and that gap tells you almost everything. The critical line is not wrong on the facts and entirely wrong on the verdict. Yes, it is overstuffed. Overstuffed is the dish you ordered. A film this committed to its own silliness should not be marked down for being silly; it should be judged on whether the silliness is funny and the action is good, and on both counts it delivers.
Verdict
I value rewatchability above almost everything, and this is a film built to be watched again. The plot folds back on itself so neatly that a second viewing is funnier than the first, every throwaway line revealed as a setup. The cast is a joy, the violence is cartoonish enough to stay light, and the whole thing moves with the confidence of a director who has finally stopped apologising for liking spectacle. It is not deep and does not pretend to be. It is two hours of expertly engineered nonsense with a brain hiding under the bonnet, and I have already watched it more times than films I would defend as better. 9⁄10.
Availability: In UK cinemas now. One for the biggest, loudest screen you can find.
Update
Added since this review first appeared: Kōtarō Isaka’s source novel was published in English as Bullet Train, and the film sent readers back to it and to his wider Tokyo-set thrillers. The film has settled into exactly the split it opened with, a critics-versus-crowd divide, and has become a reliable rewatch favourite and a streaming staple. It is now widely available on digital and disc and turns up regularly on the major platforms.
BBFC content advice
Rated 15 by the BBFC for strong bloody violence, language, brief sex. The notes below may contain spoilers.
Violence: There are regular scenes in which professional assassins fight to the death. Part of a man’s head is blown off by a booby-trapped gun. Others are decapitated and crushed. Guns, knives, meat-hooks, bats and bottles are used as weapons, with resulting bloody detail.
Threat and horror: There are scenes of moderate threat.
Language: There is use of strong language (‘fk’, ‘motherfker’), as well as other terms such as ‘bitch’ and ‘Christ’.
Sex: There is a brief sex scene, with nudity.
Suicide and self-harm: There is a scene of suicide.
Drugs: There are fleeting references to drugs.
Source: British Board of Film Classification (bbfc.co.uk).
