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Bullet Train is the new movie by David Leitch (Deadpool 2), and repeats the formula that went so well with the superhero movie; It has humor and action without limits. It brings us a wild and different journey on the fastest train, and one of the best known in the world, the bullet train in Japan.
Bullet Train Brad Pitt has gotten on a vehicle a train, in fact that wants to exploit the pleasant memory of his role in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The play has come out frog. Or ladybug. Ladybug is the code name given by her boss Sandra Bullock, seen and unseen, to the murderous protagonist of the film, a Pitt dressed in a ridiculous bucket hat and casual clothes.
The instructions are: get on the bullet train in Tokyo, take a briefcase full of money that two undesirable guys are carrying, and, two and a half hours later, get off in Kyoto. In the train with memories to From Russia with bondian love, in addition to the two twin brothers who do not look like twins, only extravagant murderers travel, including Bad Bunny his interpretation is not bad, it is the next thing and the fragile school Joey King, capable of killing a 6-year-old boy. Among all the geeks on board, stands out the false stewardess played by Zazie Beetz, who already worked with David Leitch in Deadpool 2
It is true that some of the choreographic fights are ingenious, the director was extra action, dubbing, among others, Pitt, mixing Jackie Chan with Gene Kelly. And there are jokes achieved, except for the Japanese toilets and their characteristic squirts. At times, Pitt is more Peter Sellers in The Party than anything else.
Bullet Train And those are the moments in which the film does not derail. But, in reality, everything is a jumble without harmony or style, bringing together the worst of Guy Ritchie and Tarantino; from Snatch to Kill Bill through RocknRolla. A falsely pop pastiche, with the alibi of pulp.
Bullet train is really exhausting, no matter how much you play the refocile wink. There is so much accumulation of dizzying graces that this excess produces nausea: going 300 per hour is not a virtue per se. As always in today's cinema, rhythm should not be confused with speed.
At 58 years old, Brad Pitt is considering facing the last stage of his career. This is how he commented in an interview for GQ a few weeks ago. What can be expected is that this last section will be as long as possible and, at least for now, he does not seem especially calm either. His next movie to be released is Bullet Train, a full-throttle action-comedy aboard one of Japan's well-known high-speed bullet trains, hitting theaters on August 5.
Bullet Train will be available from tomorrow, August 5, in cinemas. As it is one of the most important releases of the summer, you will not have problems finding sessions in your favorite cinemas, so you can start putting together your plan for the weekend.
Bullet Train isn't currently available with any streaming subscription, but it should be coming to Netflix as part of a new deal between the service and Sony (Bullet Train's distributor). There's no official release date, but for context, Sony's Uncharted is coming to Netflix on August 19, six months after its theatrical release. If Bullet Train follows suit, we can expect it to hit the service in early February 2023.
Bullet Train features a screenplay by Zak Olkewicz and is directed by David Leitch. It stars the following performers:
Brad Pitt as Ladybug
Sandra Bullock as Maria Beetle
Joey King as Prince
Zazie Beetz as Horney
Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Tangerine
Brian Tyree Henry as Lemon
Benito "Bad Bunny" Ocasio as Wolf
Recommended age and duration of Bullet Train
Bullet Train is rated RA for its heavy violence and gore, pervasive language, and brief sexuality. The film has a total duration of 2 hours and 6 minutes, including the credits.
The one in charge behind the cameras that his character does not have too many occasions to relax has been David Leitch, from Atomic, Deadpool 2, Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw and, uncredited, in John Wick. and that he has also been Pitt's stunt double several times.
It will be a long journey between Tokyo and Morioka, almost without stops, in which Ladybug (the nickname of the character played by Pitt), a hit man who is also tired and wants to retire, receives a new mission with a mysterious suitcase like macguffin and that will make him face a good handful of criminals who don't care when it comes to doing their job.
Among these untrustworthy passengers are the rapper Bad Bunny, also Joey King as a psychopath disguised as a schoolgirl, Brian Tyree Henry playing two twins, Andrew Koji as a warrior and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as another of the lethal criminals, in a cast rounded off by the presences of Sandra Bullock and Zazie Beetz.
If Bullet Train promises to bring back the fun, surprising and action-packed spirit of the John Wick universe, or of the films by Tarantino and Guy Ritchie, there are not a few films that have set their plot largely between rails and wagons, be it inside, outside or even on top. From the silent film with the short Assault and Robbery of a Train (1903) to the brilliant physical comedy of Buster Keaton with The General's Driver (1926), the thrillers of the master Hitchcock such as Alarm on the Express (1938), or situating ourselves in the midst of World War II in Colonel Von Ryan (1965).
Bullet Train Especially productive were the 1970s with titles like Cassandra's Bridge Carrying Passengers and a Contagious Virus, or the humorous intrigue of The Chicago Express (both from 1976) with Gene Wilder, the classic Pelham 1, 2, 3 (1974) taking place in the New York subway or the Spanish co-production Panic on the Trans-Siberian (1972) in which the Granada-born Eugenio Martin had the luxury of directing two monsters of the horror genre such as Peter Gushing and Christopher Lee. And, returning to more current proposals, Robert Zemeckis turned Tom Hanks into a CGI character in the animated feature film The Polar Express, while Tony Scott put Denzel Washington and Chris Pine on a speeding railway in the adrenaline-pumping Unstoppable (2010).
They are the inconveniences or advantages of traveling by train, just like the title of the remarkable adaptation of the novel by Antonio Orejudo that Aritz Moreno made in 2019. A succession of stories each one more strange and bizarre and two passengers on a train like link. Ultimately it was all about the art of storytelling.
Ice is missing and that is precisely what Brad Pitt brings in 'Bullet train' as, in effect, the 'coolest' of the summer. This one and probably all those to come. 'Cool', as you know, refers to both what is cold and what attracts, what is liked or, as they used to say in Carabanchel before, what is cool.
I feten it, sorry. But note that a not-so-subtle difference separates what you like from what, to insist on a term in regrettable disuse, what is cool. The first belongs to the exclusive sphere of the private sphere. Like what you like. And that's it. The second, on the other hand, belongs to the shared sphere of the 'like', of the public. The 'cool', to situate ourselves, as what is cool, is not so much what you like as what you like that others know you like.
Pause. Bullet Train Between one and the other, so as not to get dizzy in so much stupid self-recursive turn, there is the same distance as between a portrait and a 'selfie' (If we want to raise the level of the conversation, the difference is that between 'El hombre d the hand on the chest' and 'Las Meninas': Velázquez painting that he paints is the one that is cool).
In the first, the portrait, a man appears in a forced relaxed position (stiff as a stick) in front of Burgos Cathedral; in the second, the 'selfie', you can see that same smiling man with a lopsided cap, his arm cut off by the frame that hides the hand holding the 'smartphone' and, behind, the cliff from which he is about to fall . What matters is not so much the portrait itself as the portrait at the moment of being portrayed. The former is an anonymous moment of life, the latter an instant of existence. The first is what it is, the second is what it is when it is. I mean, it's cool, it's 'cool'. And so. So so.
'Bullet train', to situate ourselves, is, in effect, a 'cool' film directed by one of the most necessarily 'cool' directors on the film scene (the 'cool' and the other) and starring -and here there are no more doubts- the coolest animal on the planet.
The first is called David Leitch and to his credit are tightrope exercises worthy of the Carabanchel of the past such as 'John Wick', 'Atomic', Deadpool' or the penultimate installment of 'Fast & Furious' (and this is pure Carabanchel). All of them are films to be watched without looking at the screen at all.
The game of cross-references, inside jokes and winks to the audience are there to make one leave the theater convinced that he is even smarter than his mother thinks (which he already is). The truth is that when he gets it right he is unrivaled in his well-studied role as the educated pimp. The problem is when he brakes too much. That's when he plunges off the cliff in the paragraph above.
And then there's Brad Pitt. Brad Pitt is not an actor. It seems so, he behaves like one and earns more money than anyone thanks to his performances, but, in reality and a bit like all stars, he is really an actor who acts like no one else in his eternal role of Brad Pitt . Pitt's profession is being Pitt.
Understand, it is not that he is pigeonholed, but simply that he does what he does, what he does really is Brad Pitt. He is an eternal 'selfie' of himself. Take for example Robert de Niro. He is just the opposite. In every role he plays he disappears to become just the character he gets paid for. Other actors (the greatest of all comes to mind: Marlon Brando), on the other hand, whatever they do, they are always themselves. Colonel Kurtz is actually Marlon. With Pitt the same thing happens and, to be clear, that is not bad. His perfect and perfectly preserved 58 years in formalin have made him the most recognizable actor of all. Infinitely cool.
It is true that this gives rise to misunderstandings. For a long time he was underestimated despite the fact that his works as the hysterical Mills ('Seven'), the hysterical Jeffrey Goines ('12 monkeys') or the hysterical Tyler Durden ('Fight Club') elevated the respective productions at paroxysmal level.
Paroxysm never sufficiently recognized, but paroxysm at last. Then, and probably starting with Rusty Ryan ('Ocean's Eleven'), Pitt started to feel good about the eternal role of Pitt. His role as Achilles in 'Troy' or his definitive performances in 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button', 'The Tree of Life', 'Moneyball', 'Kill Them Softly', 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' or, and on everything, 'Ad Astra' did the rest. Pitt taking off his shirt while repairing the antenna in Tarantino's latest film seems like the best definition of an actor who yells his name at the audience from the screen. Spelled.
At this point, someone must have thought it was a good idea to conflate 'cool' with 'cool'. Molon with molon. Carabanchel with Viso. Leitch with Pitt. What can go wrong? The problem is, to go back to ice and 'cool', a question of chemistry. As you know, when water freezes it increases its volume, it expands. Hence the rush to cool the beer (some water has).
The name of Brad Pitt is on the lips of all those who are dedicated to fashion and those who have no idea. And all because of his new style when it comes to dressing. Goodbye to the most classic suits and tuxedos of the most powerful firms, now the actor has embraced a new aesthetic and a new philosophy of life. We are talking about one of the most elegant men on the red carpet, an icon of the new dandyism. At least, until now. But why? It all started with the promotion of Bullet Train, his new movie.
The style change is significant. Brad Pitt has us accustomed to suits with a classic pattern and perfect cut: tailor-made suits that fit him like a glove. But now the style has gone to the other extreme and we see the actor with suits and garments with a relaxed pattern and very casual fabrics, such as cotton linen, young and refreshing. Then there is the issue of color, where the big change lies: Brad Pitt leaves black to dress in powerful colors, like the green suit he wore on the red carpet in Los Angeles. A look that sweeps social networks and has caused a long list of memes, including one that compares him to Kermit the Frog. To finish off, the yellow sneakers from the Adiddas collection in collaboration with Gucci, the Gazelle model with red stripes.
What is the reason for this drastic wardrobe change? "If we are all going to die, let's turn things upside down", with this reflection, Brad Pitt has answered questions about his styling in his last appearances on the red carpet. And honestly, if there is something good that the promotion of the film is leaving us, it is his looks. In London he opted for a look of the same style, but more sober in terms of color, a duller and darker green. It may not be the most glamorous look, of course, no one beats comfort.
In Paris, more of the same, a similar suit in gray and another in salmon, with which he almost managed to overshadow the very Eiffel Tower. In Berlin he risked color again, this time playing with different shades of pink. On the jacket, instead of buttons, a green zipper and orange stitching on the collar.
I can finally tell you. It's been a few days since I saw "Bullet Train" and I needed to share the experience in this review. Summer, heat, time to rest on the beach. And time to watch movies to turn off the brain and have fun. Well, "Bullet Train" gave me exactly that (the thing about turning off the brain, there isn't a beach in Madrid at the moment). Not an intense story, not a movie to rack your brains with. Any. 2 hours of simply having fun. Very well. No more no less. That is why it is, for me, the film of the summer.
David Leitch, the director of "Deadpool 2", tells in "Bullet Train" a new story of assassins and mercenaries whose mission gets out of hand. Rather, their missions. Because each of the bloodthirsty passengers on this Japanese bullet train has something different to do. On one side is Mariquita (Brad Pitt), who has to steal a briefcase. On the other are the "twins" Lemon and Tangerine (Brian Tyree Henry and Aaron Taylor-Johnson) who have to bring home the kidnapped son of a yakuza leader, The White Plague. Then there's The Prince (Joey King), who wants to kill that same mob leader. And at the "Bullet Train" party he sneaks up to Bad Bunny as the fearsome El Lobo, a ferocious hit man who cries out for revenge.
As you can see, everything is incredibly exaggerated and striking from the names themselves. And, as you can also imagine, they all end up crossing each other along the train. Because one of the coolest things about "Bullet Train" is that practically the entire movie takes place in one place, in the cars of this modern, very kawaii bullet train that travels from Tokyo to Kyoto. A very small space that gives a lot of room for both action and humor. The stories of the characters are intertwined in such bizarre and unpredictable ways that, in the end, you don't know who to trust or what secret intention each one has.
If I liked the film so much it was because it plays very well all the tricks it has. Leitch clearly learned to have fun directing Marvel's loudmouth mercenary. And, now, he repeats the same formula but taking it even further. The action in "Bullet Train" is so insanely explicit and bloody that any fan of the genre is going to spend the entire movie with their eyes rolling with excitement. It never stops, it's hypnotic and it will fascinate anyone who wants to see slaps, shots and even katanas. Also, if we speak from a formal point of view, the direction in this sense is very well taken care of, with very clean shots and very dynamic choreographies taking advantage of the space.
But man does not live by fights alone. The explosive cocktail that Leitch has prepared for us is seasoned with totally surreal dialogues. But surreal level jokes every 5 minutes about the cartoon series "Thomas and his friends". So much overload of moments of humor ends up exhausting because, obviously, not everything works equally well. When you don't see the joke coming, "Bullet Train" is impeccable and hilarious. But other times it is very obvious and makes you disconnect a little. That, together with some moments in which the plot gets too wrapped up in itself, is the most critical part of the film.
Luckily, this doesn't bother much thanks to its fabulous cast. They are all so charismatic and it shows so much that the shooting was extreme fun that you immediately grow fond of them. I especially liked Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who gives one of his best performances in a great comedic duo with Brian Tyree Henry. Bad Bunny is also very good, making his film debut with a small but more than convincing role. The Wolf is the star guest of this function that is "Bullet Train". In his short screen time, he has plenty to transmit fear and bad vibes and even to get into a brutal fight.
But, I have to say, who shines above all is Brad Pitt. The actor brings to life a hilarious and somewhat goofy character, giving him the option to let loose more than ever. He is the main protagonist and carries the film on his shoulders as if it cost nothing. He picks up the best of his (many) previous action and comedy roles. And he shines. His character from "Bullet Train" is by far one of the funniest and most solid of his career.
The human being establishes a series of pacts for the means of transport that he designs. Don't use your cell phone on planes, don't undress in an elevator, don't drink in a taxi. Over time, those rules expand: no smoking, wearing a mask, etc. The tearing of each little agreement, tense. Tense a lot. Precisely for this reason, it makes sense that there are so many films that mix violence and means of transport (A day of fury begins with a pissed off man in a car).
Trains in particular have a lot to explore and Bullet Train knows it. The mixture of elements that favor tensions -the silent car being sullied, the beverage cart that prevents moving down the aisle, the rest of the passengers- together with the cultural shock that it represents for a Westerner to enter the formal Japanese life -greetings, bows , toilets with multi-purpose jets - are an exceptional breeding ground for this contemporary and pop Murder on the Orient Express.
In any case, these casting problems were not the only ones that director Andrew Dominik, whom Pitt (having worked with him on several occasions) describes as “an old friend”, has encountered over the last decade. Several movie studios had their objections regarding the highly sexual content of a script that does not skimp on morbid details about Monroe's relationship with the Kennedy brothers, while its massive 166-minute running time was also a mess about which Dominik he refused to negotiate, saying he was simply respecting the work of Carol Oates.
In the end, only Netflix dared to go all the way with a project that we will be able to see next September, just in time to open the awards season. With Blonde, the streaming giant hopes to recover much of the prestige lost in one of the most difficult years in its entire existence. Can a night of glory at the Kodak Theater make them forget the bleeding of subscribers and the abrupt cancellation of projects that have marked their 2022?.
If everything goes as expected, it is very possible that Brad Pitt will combine the box office success that Bullet Train is called to be during this month of August with the prestige that a good Oscar in exchange for his sacrificed work in Blonde could bring him.
Of course, it would not be the first time that something like this has happened: let us remember that Pitt was an executive producer of Twelve Years a Slave (2012), The Big Short (2015), Moonlight (2016), The Vice of Power (2018) or Minari ( 2020), to name just a few of the multi-award winning films he already has to his credit. The guy has won statuettes for his sense of smell and his commitment to his talent, so we better listen to him when he says that Ana de Armas is something we should keep in mind for this fall. Much has to be twisted so that she does not end up being nominated.
