‘Bullet Train:’ a fast ride with old tropes
Written to be an exotic thriller and award show contender, “Bullet Train” succeeds in neither area. The audience follows Ladybug (Brad Pitt), an unlucky assassin who’s about to get the ride of his life. Adorned with “Street Fighter”-esque aesthetics and homages to Jackie Chan, “Bullet Train” is a misguided attempt at what white men think Asian movies are.
“Bullet Train” attempts what many critics predict the second season of “Squid Game” will be: a full cast of established actors in subversive roles too tastefully niche to be mainstream. The similarities wouldn’t just end there.
From the trailers, the marketing team made clear the movie would be centered around a singular space. Instead of large childhood playgrounds, each scene was contained within the train’s cars, a familiar challenge for many amateur screenwriters trying to write the next “Murder on the Orient Express.”
Though I have a particular affinity toward mindless television, a movie with a $90 million budget should not have left me feeling so indifferent. The strong performances and tight pacing were unable to suspend disbelief around the ambiguity of major plot devices. The usual tricks of bright color usage, snarky one-liners and slapstick humor felt like scraps from the cutting room floor of another David Lietch movie, “Deadpool 2.”
If the visual effects team had pulled back on gore with the same ruthlessness they had on Joey King’s hairline, this movie would’ve been nearly palatable. Mothers who once dreamed of being Pitt’s Mrs. Smith were seen leaving the theater pearls clutched in hand. There’s something very peculiar about an action movie that seems to flaunt its share of the market: ensemble movies have always been destined for large box office numbers, but the film’s excessive usage of bodily fluids showed a near-intent in eliminating a large portion of their potential audience. Even with over a dozen fight scenes in just two hours, the dialogue was lengthy and broke the first rule of filmmaking: Show, don’t tell.
Throughout the first watch and every subsequent re-watch, my skepticism of the story’s location only continued to grow. Why was this movie set in Tokyo? As another failed entry in Hollywood’s inexplicable content remaking cycle, Lietch seemingly gives up on his studio-given task of interpreting “Maria Beetle,” Kōtarō Isaka’s popular Japanese novel which studio executives are keen to recreate. By replacing all but two characters with non-Japanese roles, the adaptation effectively erases any need for the Tokyo setting. Besides, wouldn’t the casting be much more appropriate for the westbound E-line? In an interview with Seventeen, King said, “I do not believe a white woman should play a character of color. Not me or any white woman for that matter.” And yet, the “The Kissing Booth” actress takes up the largest amount of screentime for a female character, all while playing a role meant for someone of Asian descent. How… exotic.
Despite obvious efforts to be the next “Knives Out,” this movie falls closer to the inconsequential lull of “Don’t Look Up.” If this is what post-Tarantino filmmaking looks like, I’m not sure I want it. As a proponent of decentering the white male perspective as the default, I have a hard time enjoying a movie built on the very principles of pandering to Eurocentric standards. In addition to the insistence on graphic humor and the strong white-washing, the whole story seems to be presented with a lens of misogyny. The writing of the women portray them as weak, shallow and privy to digressive tangents. The men, written to be witty and himbo-like, come off as condescending and ignorant, so much so that I began to resent them.
The intention of creating social commentary through caricature-like personalities is such an obvious writing trope, and an offensive one at that. Pitt’s portrayal of his character’s pursuit of wellness lacked the genuinity it tried so desperately to evoke, leading to a borderline “Eat Pray Love”-level of cultural colonization. In a near-comical moment of method acting, Pitt and co-star Aaron Taylor-Johnson prayed for success for their movie at the Koyasan Tokyo Betsuin Temple as a part of the film’s press tour.
In the cultural zeitgeist of train movies, “Bullet Train” falls flat. The twists are too audience-aware, the inverted tropes too peddling. The film could’ve been something a disinterested theater student would’ve written in high school, although I don’t think even they would betray their standards this far. Very rarely have I found a movie so much like background noise, much less one I actually paid matinee prices for. For those wondering if their college schedule time and college student money is worth spending on an expensive blunder that tries so hard to live up to “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World,” I recommend you forgo taking this ride.