Bullet Train (2022)
Directed by David Leitch
Unlucky assassin Ladybug is determined to do his job peacefully after one too many gigs gone off the rails. Fate, however, may have other plans, as Ladybug's latest mission puts him on a collision course with lethal adversaries from around the globe—all with connected, yet conflicting, objectives—on the world's fastest train.
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36 films that influenced Bullet Train
What critics say influenced Bullet Train
It’s as if the director watched Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction , Doug Liman’s Go , Guy Ritchie’s Snatch , and Joe Carnahan’s Smokin’ Aces and thought he’d try to use Isaka’s source material as the base ingredient in a stew that would be an homage to all of those 1990s and early 2000s crowd-pleasers.
The influence of the Pulp Fiction director can obviously never be overstated, but it’s reaching a point where any pop culture reference in a film is characterised as stealing from Tarantino, and while the irreverent, bolshy nature of Bullet Train will inevitably rub some people up the wrong way, yet it possesses merits and is a lot of fun.
Any major actor’s presence will alter a project; if the above theory carries any weight whatsoever, it’s why this feels thirty percent less like one of those completely disposable post- Pulp Fiction endurance tests of contrived cleverness and pop culture references.
Además, siguen una dinámica parecida a los reconocidos Vincent y Jules de Pulp Fiction , sin llegar a esas interacciones tan míticas que son historia del cine, mezcla al realizador Quentin Tarantino con el británico.
Cuando te sientas a ver “Tren Bala”, la nueva película del director David Leitch, las comparaciones con “Kill Bill” (o Tarantino en general) son inevitables: su mezcla de géneros, curioso humor negro y descarada violencia recuerdan mucho a las piezas más famosas del director de “Pulp Fiction”.
Klingt ein bisschen nach einer Forstsetzung von Pulp Fiction .
And since the director’s official 2017 feature debut (he gets an uncredited nod for the original John Wick ), his focus has been on slight, action-heavy comedies: Deadpool 2 and Hobbs & Shaw.
It’s not the concept, or the performances which are at fault – maybe it’s the script, the pacing or the editing… The stunts are effective too (which given director David Leitch’s prior career as a stuntman and co-directing John Wick , 2014, isn’t entirely surprising).
Directed by the man behind John Wick, Atomic Blonde and Deadpool 2, David Leitch once again proves himself one of the most adept action directors in Hollywood.
Just like how Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron became the main selling points in their physically-demanding roles in their respective John Wick and Atomic Blonde movies, director David Leitch made Brad Pitt the centre of attention in Bullet Train.
Directed by David Leitch ( Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw ; Deadpool 2 ; Atomic Blonde ; John Wick ) from a screenplay written by Zak Olkewicz based on the novel Maria Beetle by Kotaro Isaka.
In a similar sense to what his famed companion Chad Stahelski did with the John Wick series, David Leitch really dives into the deep end with Bullet Train being so clearly influenced by classic Yakuza and Samurai films.
His entrance is highly reminiscent of John Travolta's in Saturday Night Fever, as he walks down the streets of Tokyo to the beat of a Japanese cover of Staying Alive .
At least they have the wit to underscore Pitt’s initial appearance with a Japanese artist’s rerecording of the Bee Gees song Staying Alive, complete with feet walking towards camera straight out of Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977).
There are times when Bullet Train even feels a little bit like a throwback as Kill Bill did, in the way that David Leitch and Quentin Tarantino both appreciate what’s come before them in the genre.
It's as if the film put Kill Bill , Smokin' Aces , and Snatch, with a small dash of Snowpiercer into a blender and this is the final product.
It so frantically wishes to come across as quirky and cool, yet that desperation is painfully obvious – and results in mostly stale or repetitive misadventures and schemes, unable to duplicate the keenly crafted wildness of “Kill Bill” or “In Bruges” – or even “Shoot ‘Em Up” and “Smokin’ Aces” (and, most recently, “Free Fire”).
There are more dire machinations at hand, revealing the film to be a little like Murder on the Orient Express by way of John Wick or Kill Bill .
Furthermore, it contains plenty of the stylistic choices in Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” (the backstories for side characters, the needle drops, the slow-motion apparitions, etc).
Bullet Train actually feels more like Kill Bill on rails.
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I was reminded, too, of how Zazie Beetz is the best thing about Deadpool 2 --she's in Bullet Train as a fellow assassin called The Hornet (Brad Pitt is "Ladybug")--and how she was also in the incredible The Harder They Fall , a film that is better than this one in every single respect for a variety of reasons, but mainly because it's not a self-satisfied, self-referential, Oceans Eleven smug-stival.
The movie also featured Sandra Bullock as Ladybug’s handler and I was kind of hoping for the same winning chemistry they previously shared, albeit briefly in The Lost City.
On his latest mission, he is instructed via phone by a woman named Maria (Sandra Bullock, of The Lost City ) to simply find a briefcase and take it off the train.
Following on from an equally goofy part as a Zen adventurer in The Lost City, here he indulges himself in a dizzy haplessness as he tries to avoid killing anyone.
As for the cameos, let’s just say there’s The Lost City reunion as well as one of the stars from one of Leitch’s biggest hit movies.
While the lack of different settings might cause a lot of problems, not for Leitch and his cinematographer Jonathan Sela (“The Lost City”, “Transformers: The Last Knight”).
Here she plays a ruthless assassin dressed like a schoolgirl with a British accent, which reminds me of a character out of Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch .
At a certain point, the joke is that Bullet Train is The Cannonball Run on a bullet train.
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The film’s insubstantiality and misjudged tone recall Lucky Number Slevin , another ultra-violent black comedy that pulled punches and failed to live up to its potential.
It bears much more resemblance to Takashi Miike’s First Love , Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire and the similarly smug but still quite good Lucky Number Slevin .
Bullet Train ’s characters were given nicknames, like the characters in Lock, Stock , Snatch , and Rocknrolla .
Iako netko u filmu kaže "Jednostavnije je bolje", osnovna akcijska premisa je zakomplicirana do podzapletne kaotičnosti i pretvorena u crnohumornu akcijsko-krimi-trilersku zavrzlamu kakvu je nekoć znao režirati Guy Ritchie ("Lopovi, ubojice i dvije nabijene puške", "RockNRolla") i to s Pittom u jednoj od uloga ("Zdrpi i briši"), a i još uvijek se zna vratiti takvim ili približno takvim filmovima ("Šifra: U.N.C.L.E", "Gospoda", "Dani gnjeva") u pauzama od blockbustera ("Sherlock Holmes", "Kralj Arthur", "Aladin").