by Kay Curry
Northwest Asia Weekly
FYI, there are no staff on the bullet train in Tokyo. So if you need to kill, maim, shout, be covered in blood, etc, I highly recommend this as the location. Of course, there is always a conductor (Masi Oka) who shows up when you don’t have a ticket. There is also a lovely server (Karen Fukuhara) who is too polite to say anything when she breaks your fist.
Here we are on ‘Bullet Train’, the action movie we’ve been waiting for, it seems to be around forever, and it’s the perfect blend of humor, gore, music and stunts to make you forget it’s a long two hours. Thank goodness. I almost made the “Story” list, but really, do we care? It’s complicated, there’s a lot of killers, all targeting each other, and there’s the ultimate bad guy, or “Mr. Death” as Brad Pitt’s character, codenamed “Ladybug,” as he is politely called. There are family dramas, thieves code, and gangster dead wives who never seem to consider that their non-traditional jobs might be to blame.
Pitt plays “Ladybug,” a half-reformed con man who now only does non-killing work (he hates guns), is seeing a therapist, and often invokes Zen-like clichés. Yes, there’s enough material out there to last an entire movie, or even a series, and it’s 100% enjoyable.
“Look,” said Ladybug, sitting across from a killer, holding only a gun that pretends to be invisible, “there’s a wall between us. But it’s an illusion. There’s really a window there—a A window of opportunity.” Or is it a door? He forgot. I’ve always loved Pitt’s comedic roles the most, and this time was no exception. I never tire of him telling everyone they need to “process” their emotions and trying to get out of the huge mess by any non-violent means possible, while, of course, being a badass.
Everyone worries about their luck and destiny. Ladybugs are convinced they are out of luck.
His manager, who talks in his headset most of the time, thinks it’s all what you see. It could be that your bad luck is actually good luck, or that you see the negatives too easily without noticing that you’ve just been saved by some seemingly random event. The Japanese mogul/samurai in the movie The Elder, many of the characters don’t have real names, and Mortal Kombat’s own Sanada Hiroyuki tells Ladybug it’s all destiny. Fate will provide. Just sit down. It all comes in a complete cycle. (I actually cried at this part, and I don’t know why; maybe I have something to do with the ladybug frustration and the lip balm the elders provided.)
Hiroyuki Sanada starred in Bullet Train.
It goes to show that these are bad guys, but we love them no matter what. Yes, the violence, the gangster way of life, is glorified and fun.
Like all the good action movies we’ve made over the years, starting with “Pulp Fiction,” adding some “Deadpool,” maybe a movie starring Rock and Kevin Hart, we’ve got this fantastic collection body. Right now for us.
By the end you’ll like almost everyone, or at least have some sympathy for each of them – I mean one’s life is based on “Tank Engine Thomas”, how is that not cute? — even if they committed unspeakable atrocities.
(By the way, I was anxiously waiting for the whole movie to watch Sanada Fight and Boy, did it deliver.)
There’s a code of thieves in “Bullet Train,” where criminals come together, a pecking order, a “who’s the worst,” and who you can work with to get out alive. I love the variety of this film. You have Japanese yakuza, Russian yakuza, American yakuza (or I think that’s where the ladybug originated), Mexican yakuza, and British yakuza. You have all sorts of “types”—smoothies in retro suits, the perfect “innocent girl,” and the bearded “homeless” aesthetic played by Pitt and Andrew Corgi, “Father.”
It’s all the different types of people we find in real life (I mean, if they’re not in triads or have nicknames like “wolf”), but on steroids.
PS Koji is great in this movie. He’s rude and beleaguered, and every time he’s in a scene, he pulls you into his scruffy, blood-stained, hair-covered, messy face. Even if you know what’s going on with his character, you still say, what’s wrong with this guy? Ha ha.
The action, editing and choreography are all just right, inseparable from the riveting soundtrack. Music and slow motion accompany all the fight scenes, you want that. I asked myself at the end, what would these fight scenes look like without the music? Let’s say the movie is still great, but you feel like two hours.
Oh, just to clarify, they did try to account for the fact that all this mess happened on the train and no one noticed or said a word. They told us that “Mr. Reaper” (actually “White Reaper”, you know like “Belaruss”, whites and Russians, wine, etc.) bought all the seats so he could arrange for the bad guys Reunion, all for his own vengeance – because it’s okay if he kills hundreds, but kills his wife and the world stops, right?
So…there are some loopholes. That bit about the seats seems like an afterthought, oh maybe people will notice it’s a little weird. It doesn’t appear until the movie starts, when, in fact, the train has passengers — including Channing Tatum’s hilarious cameo — and three totally unrealistic careless staff. There’s also a gangster (another cameo that I won’t reveal) that is kind of like MIA and should probably be on screen again.
Without giving away anything, I can tell you that at the end, there’s a great scene where Ladybug’s handler’s car gets crushed, but they come out alive. Ladybug, now fully accepting the whole fate – no, you can’t control it, but you can trust it – to the steward mourning her squashed car, “How do we know it’s a bad thing? “The words of life.
Kay can reach info@nwasianweekly.com.
