For all the charm David Leitch has instilled in the action genre, something just did not click for Bullet Train. His work behind the camera on Atomic Blonde, his faith in projects like Nobody and John Wick, all of this should gear Leitch up for another spot in the director’s chair. It falls far from where it should be, but at least has its moments. There is too much for Bullet Train to account for when Leitch, for better or worse, works best when his plot is simple, his threads are clear and his action is at the front of the feature. That is not the case for the Brad Pitt-led Bullet Train, which feels flashy and colourful despite holding nothing but empty gestures and poor interpretations.
Unfortunate it may be that so much of Bullet Train looks good, but it does not sound or feel good. Pouring rain with fancy masks and criminal masterminds looks cool, but they are meaningless. Leitch has come full circle with his intentions as a director and as a firm hand on the throat of the action genre. His simple plots have given way to fluffy directive strokes and do more to highlight the rather grim state of the action-comedy blur than anything else. Beyond The Gentlemen, it is hard to pinpoint another strong contender for the genre, that has not seen much love for a long while. Still, the likes of Aaron Taylor-Johnson make Bullet Train beyond insufferable, a cheeky cockney accent to dispose of a lack of character depth found elsewhere in the writing. He may be English, but Tangerine is not. Playing up the diatribe and insults between a group of characters in one location is not the same as building up unique surroundings or individuals.
Leitch does not appear to mind, though. Most of the action is thoroughly focused on Johnson and some solid work from Bryan Tyree Henry, the pair finding themselves interacting with most of the course of the movie. Joey King and Brad Pitt come off much worse than first expected, although their work here is completely passable. Bullet Train is predictable slop, and it is not fun slop either. Camera framings that give away a big death or reveal a plot feature far too soon, characters that slip through the fingers and leave no room for the ever-present hunger for merchandise and extrapolation into a series or the fluidity and feel that comes from a feature that reaches a natural conclusion. It is all run through the Netflix commodity machine, post-credits scenes and flashy generics to boot.
Bullet Train has clearly seen the charms of Knives Out and the omnibus of funny names provided by Bob Mortimer on Would I Lie To You? and decided to try and mould the two together. Americanised beyond compare, if that sort of humour appeals then Bullet Train will have glimmers of flavour in its residual. Its constant darting back and forth between compartments of a train, hospital beds and previous lives and experiences are resplendent in their star power and useless in their definition. Stylish lighting and record-scratch mundanities do very little to cover the barebones-yet-confused storyline threaded throughout Bullet Train.
