Brad Pitt leads a wickedly funny ensemble in a high-octane actioner loaded with twists. Adapted from the 2010 Japanese novel by Kōtarō Isaka, Bullet Train has a bevy of disparate assassins manipulated by a mysterious criminal mastermind. Stuntman turned action director, David Leitch (John Wick, Atomic Blonde), stays true to form with unrelenting bloody and flamboyant violence. The codenamed characters get downright verbose before beating, stabbing, and shooting each other to bits. The loquacious banter tends to run long, but the narrative always bounces back with sharp reveals. Strap in for a helluva ride.

Ladybug (Pitt) boards the overnight bullet train to Tokyo with a newfound sense of self. He’s chock-full of philosophy after recovering from a near fatal ambush. Ladybug ignores his unseen handler’s advice to take a gun. Surely any issues can be resolved peacefully. The job seems straightforward enough. Steal a briefcase with a sticker and exit at the next stop.

Also on board are Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry) and Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), ruthless “twins” known for their brutal methods. Lemon is obsessed with the British children’s show “Thomas & Friends”. He reads people by comparing them to the anthropomorphized trains. The twins are escorting the previously kidnapped son (Logan Lerman) of a powerful gangster, the White Death (Michael Shannon).

None of the hired guns are aware of the Father, aka Yuichi Kimura’s (Andrew Koji), mission. He’s out for vengeance but foolishly runs into a deceptive figure. The Prince (Joey King) has a score to settle with the White Death. Meanwhile, the Wolf (Bad Bunny) joins the fray after his truly horrific Mexican wedding. He’s also ready for serious comeuppance. Ladybug quickly realizes they’re all unwitting pawns in a dangerous game. Someone has packed the train with killers for an unknown purpose. He desperately wants to get off but can’t seem to escape the carnage.

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Cast of Bullet Train

Bullet Train introduces the cast with splashy entrances that flashes back to their dark pasts. The murderous montages are informative but don’t fill in every gap. The script doles out more critical information as the bodies pile up. Alliances bounce back and forth as everyone wonders who’s actually pulling the strings. The whodunit element works well as the audience becomes embroiled in a series of betrayals. You don’t have a sense of the plot’s true trajectory until the third act. The film builds to a showdown that delivers a huge action payoff.

Bullet Train has complex characters that each contribute slices of devilish humor. Brad Pitt preaching self-help and understanding is an effective gag throughout. Brian Tyree Henry’s constant comparisons to Thomas & Friends aren’t as comical but play an important role in the story. There are a lot of moving parts. Leitch, who worked as Pitt’s stunt double for years, is clearly fond of his players. He gives everyone a chance to babble incessantly. I would have trimmed the dialogue to be more incisive.

The action scenes are worth the price of admission. Leitch has a great eye for mixing stylized set pieces with intimate fights. He knows when to go big and small. You never feel let down by his pacing. There’s always the right amount of adrenaline to keep your pulse pumping. Bullet Train is another feather in a skilled filmmaker’s cap. Watch out for A-list cameos and a mid-credits scene.

Bullet Train is a production of Columbia Pictures, Fuqua Films, and 87North Productions. It will be released theatrically on August 5th from Sony Pictures.

If orchestrated properly, with adjusted stakes, tone, and atmosphere, there can be a beautiful, symbiotic relationship between intense action and comedy. A hero pulling off a rapid and vicious series of blows against an opponent can be savage and dramatic in one context, but it can also be so deliriously awesome that an audience’s first reaction is to laugh. Fast paced martial arts can be used for wonderful physical humor (see: the legendary career of Jackie Chan), and the best examples provide dual layers of entertainment: you marvel at the skill in all the ass-kicking, and cackle at the creativity in the choreography.

This is a sweet spot that filmmaker David Leitch knows well. After peppering funny moments in John Wick and Atomic Blonde at the start of his directorial career, he brilliantly utilized the action/comedy weapon that is Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool 2, and crafted some excellent physicality with the unique styles of Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham in Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw. His latest, Bullet Train, is another effort that takes aim at that particular tonal target, this time with his most expansive ensemble yet, and it’s another success. With a sensibility that could be described as early Guy Ritchie with more specific action focus, it’s a movie that is both silly and skilled and inspires its primary star in particular to do energetic and engaging work.

Based on the novel Maria Beetle by Kōtarō Isaka, the film weaves multiple narrative threads through the cars of the titular bullet train as it speeds through the country of Japan – all of the protagonists being killers with their own particular reason and motivation for being aboard. Ladybug (Brad Pitt), for example, is a hired gun who has been tasked by his handler (Sandra Bullock) to perform what sounds like a simple job: find a briefcase marked with a train sticker and steal it. What he doesn’t know, though, is that said briefcase belongs to a pair of British hit men named Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry) and Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), and that the contents include the recovered ransom for the kidnapped son (Logan Lerman) of a powerful crime lord known as The White Death.

Meanwhile, Kimura a.k.a. The Father (Andrew Koji) is on the bullet train because he is on a mission of vengeance – hunting down the person responsible for nearly killing his son by pushing the boy off of a building. What he doesn’t expect is that the individual he is looking for is a young woman identified as The Prince (Joey King), and that she has purposefully gotten him on the high speed rail with the intention of forcing him to execute an assassination attempt.

And while five killers sharing the space would be enough for most movies, Bullet Train actually has even more that pop in and surprise throughout the film’s runtime – and their roles are worth keeping as a secret pre-release.

Bullet Train has a chaotic storyline, but the pieces properly connect as a fun puzzle.

Narratively speaking, Bullet Train is a messy movie to put together, as focus briskly ping-pongs between the different players, but everything stays in harmony as the film persistently finds ways to build on each protagonist’s arc. This is particularly cool later in the movie as different characters are drawn together from individual angles and instant conflict is generated from their simple interaction.

The film is at its best when it keeps things simple, but it does let things go off the rails at times (if you’ll pardon the pun). This is especially true as it gets into the third act and it tries to pull off stunts like one of the leads leaping from a platform on to the back of the train as it leaves a station; it’s both a problem for the “rules” of the universe and in its strained use of visual effects. The movie also frequently tries to get a bit too cute and Tarantino-esque with what are admittedly familiar-but-not-quite-stock characters – the most prominent example being an ongoing and quickly tiresome gag with Lemon explaining that he understands people through the lens of Thomas The Tank Engine.

Primarily, though, it’s a movie that is able to generate its entertainment with engaging and quippy dynamics between the members of the ensemble, both when they are talking out their issues and trying to kill one another.

David Leitch puts a lot of exciting and weird fights in a confined space, and is at its best when working with a “less is more” philosophy.

Coming from a stunt background, both as a performer and a coordinator, David Leitch’s bread and butter remains deftly and specifically choreographed action sequences, and Bullet Train proves to be a terrific challenge and opportunity for his skills. Regardless of where you are in the titular transport, space is not a luxury, and the best fights in the movie are those that are being fought only between the characters, but against the limitations provided by the location.

There are guns, knives and explosives in the mix, but Bullet Train also has some terrific “found item” moments that add spice and humor to the various showdowns, whether it’s a pocketed cell phone saving a character’s life from a blade, a laptop making for a solid cudgel, a water bottle making for a useful projectile, or a venomous snake showing up at a perfect moment.

Once again we see David Leitch work a special magic turning dramatic and comedic actors into badasses with slick and stylish moves, and while everyone shows off some terrific skills, it’s very much the Brad Pitt show at the end of the day.

Brad Pitt’s joy in the role of Ladybug is palpable.

At the nexus of everything good in Bullet Train is Brad Pitt, who very clearly had a blast reuniting with David Leitch (who performed the actor’s stunts in films including Fight Club, The Mexican, Mr. And Mrs. Smith and Troy). He’s a joy to watch in action not just because of the talented craft he demonstrates in his physicality, but how he channels the psychology of the character. As we meet him, Ladybug is reluctantly getting back into his business following a number of important breakthroughs with his therapist, and Pitt does a fantastic job conveying that he doesn’t ever want to choose violence as a first answer – both via verbal pleas and defense-heavy moves. Action/comedy is a genre he should revisit a lot more often.

Bullet Train doesn’t aim to revolutionize hitman movies, but instead plays with a tongue-in-cheek vibe that lets you recognize the tropes and appreciate how the film plays with them. It’s a slick/goofy action movie that is both contained and wild, and a satisfying late summer release.

If there is one reason to see the action thriller The Killer, it is for the presence of Korean action star Jang Hyuk. He plays the retired hitman Ui-gang who mostly just loves his coffee and keeps to himself without much of a care in the world. He is quietly intimidating in a manner that makes his subsequent return to killing feel inevitable, as if he was just looking for a reason to get back to what he does best. When his wife takes a trip, he is tasked with looking after the daughter of her traveling companion. Initially annoyed with this responsibility, he soon will have to jump into action in order to protect her from a sinister world. What follows is an experience that gestures at the action stunts found in a film like John Wick which is then crossed with a narrative that feels like a watered-down version of You Were Never Really Here. Unfortunately, The Killer is not nearly as good as either of those vastly superior works.

The positives come in the action itself, mainly two sequences that really come alive. One is an extended fight where Ui-gang must take down oncoming attackers in a building he has come to investigate. Going from the confines of an elevator to a hallway and adjoining rooms, the scene feels dynamic in a way most of the film does not. It is well-choreographed and staged with all the stunt performers expertly selling the scene. You feel every hit as the camera dances around the characters, observing it all as though it is a one-shot sequence. Any cuts are relatively well-hidden such as when the camera zooms in on a combatant’s back only to pull back for the fighting to continue. The other highlight comes towards the end, as Ui-gang fights while using a fancy bar as cover. It sees the equally matched fighters rolling around each other from cover, angling to get close enough to land a blow or clip the other with a shot. When you’re in the midst of these scenes, the film manages to tap into something kinetic.

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Outside of these moments, the rest of the experience feels generally lackluster. Centered on Ui-gang digging into the mystery of who is behind a human trafficking operation, the rather shallow narrative feels like it is an excuse to get to more action sequences. This is all well and good, as many other works have similarly made use of a bare-bones narrative just to get to the next big fight. The only issue is that said fights are generally scattered and fleeting, save for the two standout ones there just aren’t that many other moments that jump out. While Ui-gang is a convincingly ruthless killer whose skills are unmatched, the film often struggles to find something to point him at. The best action films are ones that are economical, wasting no time in throwing the characters into fights. While there is a need to establish some sort of narrative stakes, this all must be in service of the action itself. The Killer initially seems to take this to heart, showing Ui-gang in the middle of a big fight before he gets a text message. It then jumps back in time to unnecessarily lay everything out about how he got there.

This not only undercuts the investment we had in this opening scene, it then takes quite a bit of time to really get going. While his more conventional domestic life and interior monologue offer a chance at some humor, it starts to quickly wear thin as we wait for things to kick into gear. By the time we get there, many of the scenes feel held together by repetition. We will see Ui-gang go to a place, smack some people around for information, and then leave to go do it all again. He certainly looks cool with his coffee cup frequently in hand, as if he is just going out for a stroll and not killing his way through the city, but it starts to feel painfully directionless. There is subterfuge, betrayal, and unexpected revelations, though it all lacks any greater sense of momentum. There are some stylistic visual moments that go a long way in pushing through the slog of the story. However, this only leaves one wishing that the narrative itself felt more engaging. Instead, it feels like an unnecessary detriment to the overall experience. The film becomes more formulaic than it does fun, as it goes through the motions without any prevailing joy to it. This leaves it feeling like one of those films where you marvel at the stunt work you get to see while still being disappointed at how lacking the rest of the journey is. There is a moment where it directly references the 2010 film The Man from Nowhere, as if to indicate to the audience that it is wanting to create a classic action experience of its own. Unfortunately, it ends up falling far short of such an aspiration.

This isn’t to say that the film is unredeemable. It just struggles to hold your attention when it needs to. It isn’t what one would call boring, especially when chaos breaks out, though the moments in between can start to drag. There is a good film in here that could be made more present if the story itself was punched up as much as the enemies are. This is unfortunate as every dynamic moment of deadly destruction is undercut by ones that are ultimately uneventful. For every explosive moment, there are multiple others that not only don’t pack the same energy but end up feeling woefully draining. All the investment it puts into the twists and turns is without any greater emotional weight because of this almost timid sense of storytelling. All the audacious and anarchic action becomes tempered by this, an unnecessary misstep that the film still pays dearly for. By the time it all reaches a conclusion, you’ll remember the solid action scenes the film did fully execute and not much else.

Rating: C