BULLET TRAIN : Tuesday 9th August 2022.

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'BULLET TRAIN' earlier this week and this American action comedy film is Co-Produced and Directed by David Leitch whose previous film making credits include his uncredited debut on 2014's 'John Wick' with Chad Stahelski, then 'Atomic Blonde' in 2017, 'Deadpool 2' in 2018 and 'Fast and Furious Presents : Hobbs & Shaw' in 2019. The film is based on the Japanese novel 'Maria Beetle' by Kotaro Isaka, and was released in the US last week too, having been originally slated for release on 8th April before being delayed to 15th July then again to 29th July and then finally settling on 5th August. It had its World Premiere in Paris, France on 18th July. The film has grossed so far US$72M from its production budget of about US$88M and has garnered mixed or average reviews.

The film opens with a distraught father, Yuichi Kimura (Andrew Koji) looking over his young son laying in a hospital bed in a coma having been thrown off a supermarket roof. His father, The Elder (Hiroyuki Sanada) enters the room and asks his son what was he doing while his son was on the supermarket roof? A father is supposed to look out for their children! Kimura swears vengeance on the person who threw his son off the roof. We then cut to former professional assassin codenamed Ladybug (Brad Pitt), who has recently attended therapy, returns to work with a new positive spin on life. He is tasked by his handler, Maria Beetle (Sandra Bullock), to complete what appears to be a simple task - to collect a briefcase aboard a bullet train travelling from Tokyo to Kyoto after her usual contact, Carver, is forced to cancel due to illness. Ladybug is at first reluctant, as his notorious years long run of bad luck continues to haunt him every job he gets, resulting in numerous accidental deaths. 

Unknown to Ladybug, three other assassins are onboard - hitmen brothers Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry) and The Prince (Joey King) a mercenary posing as an English schoolgirl. The former two have been tasked by the ruthless Russian, The White Death, head of the world’s largest crime syndicate, who has taken control of the Japanese criminal underworld by force wiping out everyone who gets in his way. The brothers find their employment to be somewhat suspicious given The White Death specifically contracted them for their participation for a job in Bolivia in which the pair singlehandedly took out sixteen goons and an innocent bystander. 

Having retrieved The White Death’s kidnapped son and the briefcase containing his US$10M in ransom monies, the brothers are delivering both to Kyoto. Meanwhile in the First Class cabins, The Prince summons fellow assassin, Yuichi Kimura, to the train, having pushed his young son off the roof of the supermarket. She has already planted an associate at the hospital ready to finish the boy off, should Kimura fail in any way to cooperate with her plan, which involves rigging the briefcase and Kimura’s gun with explosives to kill White Death, who is known for executing his adversaries by turning their own weapons on them. Successfully stealing the briefcase, Ladybug is ambushed by another assassin, code-named The Wolf (Benito A. Martinez Ocasio), who had arrived seeking revenge for the deaths of his wife and his entire cartel, poisoned at their Mexican wedding. After a brief fight, The Wolf is accidentally killed when his knife thrown at Ladybug ricochet's off the briefcase and straight back into his own heart, and then just to add insult to that injury when he collapses backwards he breaks his neck on the briefcase sitting upright at Ladybug's feet. 

After the brothers find the briefcase to be missing, they also then find White Death’s son dead by apparent poisoning. The Prince convinces Tangerine in believing that Ladybug is responsible, while Ladybug attempts to negotiate with Lemon but is forced to render him unconscious. Ladybug runs into the Wolf’s intended target, The Hornet (Zazie Beetz), the poisoner who massacred his wedding, revealed be the one who killed White Death’s son some 42 minutes earlier. She stabs Ladybug with a syringe of boomslang (a large highly venomous snake) venom in the back of the hand but fails to push down the plunger of the syringe, so he removes the syringe and injects her in the arm, ensuring the venom is all injected. Within thirty second The Hornet is dead having bled out from her eyes, nose and mouth, but not before the Hornet injects him with her only dose of anti-venom. 

Tangerine located Ladybug and the pair get into a fight both inside and outside the train, but eventually reach a stalemate with Ladybug helping Tangerine convince White Death’s men that his son and the briefcase are safe. However, their cunning plan is foiled when Ladybugs run of bad luck exposes their ruse. He then kicks Tangerine off the train. Meanwhile, suspicious of Kimura and the Prince, Lemon shoots Kimura in the stomach but falls victim to an innocent looking bottle of water that was drugged by Ladybug earlier with an extra large dose of sleeping powder. He is shot several times in the chest at close range by the Prince. After literally punching his way back onto the train through the front windscreen, Tangerine finds his brother’s body and confronts the Prince, who had a sticker of Diesel, a locomotive from Thomas & Friends, stuck onto her back. Lemon learned everything he knew about people from watching every episode of Thomas the Tank Engine as a child and so believes that Diesel cannot be trusted. The Prince though manipulates Ladybug into fighting Tangerine, resulting in him being fatally shot in the neck and bleeding out before he could warn Ladybug of The Prince. Kimura’s father, The Elder, boards the train and reveals himself as a former Yakuza lieutenant whose wife and associates were killed in White Death’s rise to power.

The Elder in the meantime has ensured that his grandson in hospital is safe by having The Prince's associate minding him killed. He and Ladybug find Kimura and Lemon still alive, with the former nursing a shot to the gut and the latter having worn a bulletproof vest, as he always does. They then all prepare themselves for the ambush awaiting them at their Kyoto destination. 

The train arrives in Kyoto, and Ladybug is met by White Death (Michael Shannon) and his henchmen. The Prince, revealed to be White Death’s very angry daughter, tries to goad him into shooting her with Kimura’s booby-trapped gun, but he instead tells her she was never part of his plan. The White Death goes on to explain that he hired all the assassins aboard the train as revenge for the murder of his wife.

Following the massacre of sixteen of his men by Tangerine and Lemon during 'The Bolivia Job', his wife was called to bail their son out of jail and was killed by Carver (Ryan Reynolds in a blink and you'll miss it cameo), who was meant to take out her husband. The only surgeon that could have saved his wife was poisoned by the Hornet, thereby almost guaranteeing her death. Blaming the brothers, Carver, the Hornet and his own son, White Death had arranged for all the assassins including the Wolf, and Ladybug, who unwittingly replaced Carver on the bullet train to kill each other and his son. However, before White Death can kill Ladybug, the briefcase bomb is triggered by a pair of hapless henchmen, knocking them both back onto the train, which Lemon starts up again at full speed ahead.

As the train hurtles along the tracks out of control, the Elder battles it out with White Death while Kimura and Ladybug fight off his numerous henchmen. Lemon tackles a goon off the train as it traverses a bridge and the both fall into the river below. The train ultimately runs out of tracks and derails, crashing through a forest and then into a nearby town destroying everything, and it, in its path. Ladybug is held at gunpoint by White Death who has The Elders Samurai sword buried deep in his shoulder. He attempts to shoot Ladybug, but is killed himself when Kimura’s gun explodes, ripping off half his face. Ladybug, Kimura, and his father, as they hobble through the wreckage and after The Elder has retrieved his sword from the White Death's shoulder, are confronted by the murderous Prince, who gloats that her luck is what resulted in the White Death’s undoing. As she proclaims herself to be the new White Death, poised with an assault rifle pointed squarely at the three of them, the Prince is mowed down by Lemon driving a truck carrying tangerines. Maria arrives to rescue Ladybug, who has consequently immersed himself in a more optimistic outlook on life and fate.

'Bullet Train' is an entertaining piece of action comedy with the emphasis on the action and less so on the comedy although I did find myself chuckling several times as both the verbal and the sight gags landed. The action comes thick and fast in kinetically choreographed fight sequences, and the melee of characters means you really need to concentrate on who's who in the zoo, but they are all in some way a necessary addition to the at times convoluted and over exaggerated plot. Messrs Pitt, Taylor-Johnson and Tyree Henry carry this film along on their coats tails with a deft touch at the action comedy genre that is as much a nod to Quentin Tarantino as it is to Guy Ritchie, with whom Brad Pitt has worked with both Directors in the past. And in David Leitch, he has once again proven his Directing chops with a fast paced, adrenalin fuelled colourful action fest full of memorable characters, an ensemble cast and a number of great cameo's along the way (including Ryan Reynolds and David Leitch himself), who all look as though they were having a blast shooting this movie. 

'Bullet Train' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps. 

-Steve, at Odeon Online-