It’s a semi-western adaptation of the 2010 bestselling novel by Japanese author Kotoro Isaka and directed by David (Deadpool 2) Leitch, all about a bunch of weird killers on a train, their murderous fates clashing chaotically, and it all ends up having more relationship between them than they think. With the whips and crash zooms, the flashbacks, the shouts, the stylized punchups, the shootings and stabbings and the inter-titles introducing the silly characters and the jihadists – two of whom are cockneys and serious West Ham fans – this is disturbingly like something from Guy Ritchie. (Though Brad Pitt’s wacky performance as a traveler in Richie’s Snatch is better than anything else here.) Be on the lookout… Brian Tyree Henry and Brad Pitt in Bullet Train. Photo: Sony/Scott Garfield/Allstar Pitt himself, in goofy hat, nerdy glasses and surfer gear, plays a laid-back hitman codenamed “Ladybug,” whose handler (Sandra Bullock) gives him an easy job to ease him back into the game after a tumultuous series of disasters. in previous missions. All he has to do is grab a briefcase of cash belonging to two other hitmen: Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry) who have just rescued the son of a famous mobster from a kidnapping and they the money is the ransom they didn’t have to pay. Both speak in poundshop Laarndaarn accents, and Lemon has an obsession with all things quirky and beautiful, Thomas the Tank Engine – an elaborate but frivolous character touch that’s about 47% as funny and well-observed as it should be. Meanwhile, another bloodthirsty Brit, code-named Prince, comes on board: a psychopathic high school student played by Joey Prince, who tried to kill the infant son of his fellow passenger, Japanese assassin Kimura (Andrew Koji), and holds him gruesomely – but it can However, we have to reckon with Kimura’s father, known as the Elder, who veteran player Hiroyuki Sanada comes closest to being truly cool than anyone in the cast. There is another killer on the train called the Wolf (Benito A Martinez Ocasio) with a grudge against Ladybug, another called the Hornet (Zazie Beetz) and above all of them legendary villainy is the White Death (Michael Shannon) waiting on the platform Kyoto. It rings heavy and continues with unexciting and uninterestingly choreographed fights, cameos that briefly boost interest, and non-placeholder lines where the funny stuff should have gone. Pitt’s puppyish good nature keeps him from being all that, but it’s got nothing like the writing and direction he got from Soderbergh or Tarantino or Fincher. And the Japanese setting is handled very roughly. There are gags about Japanese toilets that should have come out in the 1980s. This is a tourist ride to nowhere. Bullet Train opens in cinemas on August 3 in the UK, August 4 in Australia and August 5 in the US.
