“Snatch” On A Train
It should not be a coincidence that Bullet Train and the movie Snatch both feature Brad Pitt. This kind of offbeat storytelling appeals to Pitt. I get a flashback of Pitt in “Twelve Monkeys”, embracing the lunacy. One might also see Tarantino in the storytelling as well. Most of the critics get it right though, the execution is a little flat. What works however are the montages of the other assassins and their backstory. The entire production, and I mean every single shot, feels like it is from a graphic novel. Careful attention to glowing backlights from buttons or tv screens or fancy lighting in general makes this bristle with Japanese cityscape. In fact every shot of the Bullet train that goes from Tokyo to Kyoto (which I have taken myself) shows it as (CGI) cityscape. So the slick feel is done by using cutaway shots of the bullet train never leaving the city (believe it our not in reality the train does go through some countryside) as a punch point as some stunning event happens with the plot.
So this is a thriller, and it tries to throw in some whodunnit of who killed who. It also adds tension as our protagonist does not know he is in possible danger while the audience has been clued in. I like the attempt to go against stereotypes with our main characters. That includes the rich adolescent daughter. Dressed innocently, she actually has a cold heart. As for Brad Pitt, he is a little too “this all for fun”, and becomes a little too relaxed in a movie star going through the motions kind of way. Which I guarantee is not what Pitt is actually doing. I think he takes any role seriously and is acting out his character to the fullest. It's just that his character feels a but thin here.
I felt the movie started off on the wrong foot with the banter between Pitt and his handler. As an editor, I would trusted the audience to let Pitt enter the story without the on the nose exposition. I also think that a slightly more serious tone would not make the gratuitous violence feel so comic book. Therein lies the reason this movie exists in the first place, John Wick. Audiences are expecting creative action sequences, and there are many set pieces that take advantage of being stuck on a train. Two other main characters are a lower class set of English assassins, straight from “Snatch”. That movie depicted a good number of lower class criminals in England speaking goofy dialogue and taking part in some Three Stooges style of mishaps. The duo here spend the entire movie bickering, finding their personal problems more interesting than our caper. I felt their schtick was pushed (their names are Tangerine and Lemon), and the expected humour didn't really connect with the audience. Which is too bad, because they are essentially the main characters, probably getting more screen time than Pitt.
The Japan setting worked very well, although I expect that none of the film was actually shot in Japan, except maybe one of the early establishing shots. The stylish production design necessitated lots of embellishments to the slick backgrounds that the real world can't match. That's OK, I appreciated how cool the movie looked as this convoluted world of Japanese but not Japanese criminals go after the Macguffin. That is, although this a Japanese crime movie, many of the key characters are not Japanese.
As for the action scenes, they are serviceable with a mix of weapons and hand to hand fighting. However there is an annoying habit of victims dying and not dying. Those type of one twist too many issues prevent this movie from being a James Bond kind of generic thriller that delivers the goods. I just recently saw “Gray Man”, and took note that although the story had nothing original to say, it stayed to it's core action tenets and didn't try to confuse the audience with any real twists. So even though both of these films are losers for the critics, there still is a level of roller coaster ride mentality that makes a well made action yarn enjoyable. So I enjoyed this more than those recent lazy Fast and Furious films, but found the story too convoluted, even more than “Gray Man”. 6 out of 10.