“Bullet Train” Review!

“Bullet Train” Review!

Director: David Leitch

Cast: Joey King, Karen Fukuhara, Brad Pitt

Director David Leech's "Bullet Train" is very simple here. Six assassins - Ladybug (Brad Pitt), Prince (Joey King), Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry), Hornet (Sassie Peets) and Yuichi Kimura (Andrew Koji) - all board the bullet train. From Tokyo and Kyoto, each includes a briefcase full of money and the mysterious "White Death" (Michael Shannon). Members are picked off one by one, and as the missions get more complicated as they reach their destination, Ladybug must rely more on her remote handler to figure out how to survive.
 
Unsurprisingly there are some fun action set-pieces thrown together that are engaging and inventive here, barring some bad CGI in the last ten minutes and going into the world of the absurd, the film is also good. Although the comedy doesn't flow well, Taylor-Johnson's Tangerine and her "brother" Lemon have a good relationship. Henry and King's English accents are so bad they almost seem career-ending, but incidentally, it adds a bit of humor.
 
When the humor in this conceptual comedy is actually innocently straight from the recesses of the studio waste bin, it's hard to get excited about anything else about the film because you feel so patronised. Between that and all the product placement, there's something weird and cynical about the whole thing. "Bully Train" could have been even better if someone had removed all the nonsense from the script, but a movie that thinks it's funnier and weirder than that always leaves a sour taste.