7 / 10
Official trailer
One Briefcase
I’ve watched Bullet Train half a dozen times. It’s what I put on when I’m feeling low, because it makes me laugh every time. That counts for more than a lot of better-made films.
Ladybug is an assassin with the worst luck in the world. Everything he touches goes wrong, and he’s recently started therapy, trying to be a calmer, more peaceful person. His handler, a calm, cheerful voice on the phone, gives him what sounds like the easiest job of his career: board the bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto, grab a briefcase full of money and get off at the next stop.
He can’t get off at the next stop. The train is full of other killers. There are two British hitmen, Tangerine and Lemon, escorting the briefcase and a rich man’s kidnapped son. There’s a schoolgirl who isn’t what she seems, a grieving father hunting whoever pushed his son off a roof, a Mexican gangster called the Wolf and a snake stolen from a zoo. Everybody wants something, and they’re all on the same train.
David Leitch directed it, the stuntman-turned-director behind Atomic Blonde and Deadpool 2, and it’s his most ambitious action comedy: a whole movie set inside a single moving train, where nobody can get off and everybody’s armed.
For Writers
The whole film takes place on one train, with every character trapped together. The confined setting creates constant collisions.
A single contained location can be a powerful engine for plot. Characters can’t escape each other, secrets can’t stay hidden and every new arrival changes the balance. The pressure builds naturally because nobody can leave.
Leitch uses the train’s structure, carriage by carriage and stop by stop, as a clock and a map.
Each station is a deadline, and each carriage is a new arena, and the geography gives a chaotic story a clear shape. Readers always know where they are, even when they don’t know who’s going to die next. I cover this in more depth in my piece on settings that do real work.
Brad Pitt
Pitt is having a wonderful time. Ladybug is a gentle, anxious, talkative man who doesn’t want to hurt anybody and keeps having to, and Pitt plays him with a shaggy, laid-back charm, cracking jokes about therapy and complaining about his luck while fighting for his life in a quiet carriage.
It’s a very different kind of action hero from the grim, silent killers of most assassin films, and I find Pitt’s version a lot more fun to spend time with. He’s funny, likeable and surprisingly good in the fights, which are frantic, clumsy and full of improvised weapons like a laptop, a water bottle and a briefcase. I’d take one of these clumsy scrambles over a dozen slick gun ballets.
Tangerine and Lemon
The best characters on the train are Tangerine and Lemon, two British hitmen who call themselves twins and bicker like an old married couple. Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays Tangerine, sharp, vain and hot-tempered, and Brian Tyree Henry plays Lemon, who judges everybody’s personality by comparing them to characters from Thomas the Tank Engine.
They’re hilarious together, and Henry steals the film. I’d happily watch Lemon size up strangers by their Thomas the Tank Engine equivalents for two hours. Taylor-Johnson has the harder job as the vain one with the temper, and I think he’s underrated here, because so many of Henry’s best laughs bounce off Tangerine’s irritation.
My favorite thing in the whole movie is their argument about Bolivia. Tangerine says he killed seventeen men there. Lemon has him at sixteen and won’t budge.
It’s a body count defended like a sales figure, and it tells you these two have worked together for years without a word of explanation. His Thomas the Tank Engine obsession, which sounds like a gimmick, becomes a surprisingly touching running thread, and it pays off in a lovely way near the end. The pair also have real affection for each other, and it gives their scenes the film’s warmest heart.
For Writers
Lemon judges everybody by comparing them to characters from Thomas the Tank Engine. A silly quirk becomes a running thread that pays off emotionally near the end.
A character’s odd habit or obsession can do double duty: comic relief early on, emotional payoff later. The reader laughs at it, gets used to it and then sees it in a new light when it matters.
Plant a quirk early and return to it several times, each time slightly differently.
When the payoff comes, the reader will remember every earlier moment, and the joke will turn into something that means more. Henry’s Lemon makes it look easy, but the payoff works because the film never mocks the obsession. It treats it as part of who he is. Comedy Writing Secrets goes into this in detail.
The Prince
Joey King plays the Prince, a young woman in a schoolgirl uniform who appears innocent and helpless and turns out to be a ruthless manipulator with her own deadly plan. She’s pulling strings behind everybody’s back, and King plays her with a sweet smile and ice-cold eyes.
Andrew Koji plays Kimura, a father whose young son has been pushed off a rooftop, and whom the Prince has lured onto the train. Hiroyuki Sanada plays his father, the Elder, a quiet, dignified old assassin who turns up late and brings the film its only sense of gravity. Sanada is superb, and he makes you wish the whole film had his seriousness.
Stunt Man’s Action
Leitch started as a stuntman, doubling for Brad Pitt among others, and co-founded the stunt company behind John Wick. His fights have a rough, comic physicality. They happen in cramped aisles, toilets, luggage racks and a quiet carriage where a stern attendant keeps shushing everybody, and the characters use whatever’s lying around.
The best fights are funny as well as violent: two killers trying to be quiet while beating each other senseless, a briefcase used as a shield, a battle in the café car over a bottle of water. Leitch clearly loves this stuff, and the energy is infectious even when the story drags.
The White Death
Michael Shannon plays the White Death, a Russian-born crime lord who took over the Japanese underworld and whose son’s kidnapping sets the plot in motion. He’s promised as the film’s great villain for most of its running time, and when he finally appears, in a white suit, he’s more ridiculous than frightening.
Shannon is always interesting, and he gets a strong backstory scene, but the character never lives up to the build-up, and the film starts to lose me with him. By the time he arrives, it has spent so long on twists and flashbacks that there’s no room left for him to be anything more than the last obstacle, and I’d have cut ten minutes of flashback to give him some menace.
Coincidences
The film builds its structure on coincidences that turn out to be connected. The snake, the water bottle, the briefcase, the killers and a string of flashbacks all fit together in the end, as the film reveals how everybody’s past is linked to a mysterious crime boss called the White Death, played by Michael Shannon.
Most of the connections are clever and satisfying, and a few feel like the film showing off.
The script, based on a Japanese novel by Kotaro Isaka, keeps adding twists and flashbacks until the plot becomes a puzzle box. Some viewers find that tiring. I find it a big part of the fun, because every rewatch shows me another piece clicking into place.
For Writers
Coincidences connect its many characters and turn out to be part of one plan. Some connections satisfy, and others feel contrived.
Coincidence is a writer’s tool with a limit. Readers accept coincidences that create problems for characters far more readily than coincidences that solve them. And if too many threads tie together too neatly, the reader starts to see the writer’s hand moving the pieces around the board.
Use coincidence to complicate your plot, and keep the solutions in your characters’ hands. If a connection feels too convenient, give it a cost. A coincidence the characters pay for feels like fate. One they profit from feels like cheating.
Cameos
Stars turn up everywhere in small roles. Sandra Bullock plays Ladybug’s handler, Bad Bunny plays the Wolf, Zazie Beetz plays a poisoner called the Hornet, Logan Lerman plays the White Death’s son, and there are a couple of surprise cameos from very famous faces that are best discovered on screen.
It’s fun, and it adds to the film’s playful, anything-goes feel. Bad Bunny, in particular, gets a wild, wordless flashback showing why the Wolf wants revenge, and it’s the best of the film’s detours, a whole tragic story told in a couple of minutes of music and violence. You can tell everybody involved was having a blast, and the fun comes right off the screen.
Japan, Sort Of
The story takes place in Japan, and it looks like it: neon, bullet trains, vending machines, mascots and cherry blossoms. It was shot almost entirely on sound stages in Los Angeles, with the train interiors built as sets, and the Japan on screen is a kind of cartoon version, all surface and color.
Critics faulted the film for casting mostly non-Japanese actors in roles that were Japanese in the original novel. Isaka himself supported the adaptation, saying his characters weren’t tied to one nationality. Still, it’s hard not to notice that the only major Japanese characters are the father and grandfather. The setting feels more like a theme park than a country.
Kyoto Station
The finale, as the train crashes into Kyoto station and everybody’s plans collide, is huge, loud and chaotic, with a runaway train, a showdown with the White Death and a string of payoffs to earlier setups. It’s big and silly and very entertaining, and by this point you’ve either surrendered to the film’s absurdity or you’re checking your watch.
The Elder’s final fight, his sword against the White Death’s gunmen, is the one moment of real grace in the finale and the best action in the film. I wish Leitch had trusted that tone more often. Sanada shows what the whole movie could’ve felt like with a little more gravity, and I’d gladly trade some of the train-crash noise for more of him.
My Comfort Movie
Bullet Train is a lot of fun, and it stays fun on the sixth viewing. The cast is terrific, the fights are inventive and funny, and Pitt, Henry and Taylor-Johnson make it work with charm and chemistry. It’s a bit long, and it’s very pleased with itself, and I don’t care.
The number on the page is a 7, because it sags near the end and the plot can get too clever for its own good.
The number of times I’ve watched it tells you something the rating doesn’t. Some films are better made. Very few make me laugh this reliably, and that’s worth a lot.
Put it on when you need cheering up. Tangerine and Lemon deserve their own film.
Craft Note
Craft Note
The premise traps a crowd of colorful killers on one train and lets them collide, and the fun comes from the collisions. It runs on momentum and personality, and on the affection between two hitmen who argue about body counts.
A contained setting and a large cast can generate endless incident. What turns incident into something readers come back to is a relationship they care about, and Tangerine and Lemon give this film exactly that.
If your plot is a machine of twists and collisions, give the reader one pair of characters to love. They’ll ride the machine anywhere as long as those two are on board.
A Train Full of Killers
I’d rate Bullet Train a 7 on the page, and it’s one of my favorite films to rewatch: loud, bloody, silly and funny every time, with Brad Pitt at his most relaxed, Brian Tyree Henry stealing every scene and a puzzle-box plot that keeps rewarding another viewing. I’ve seen it half a dozen times, and I’ll see it again.
