In pre-Covid times, I spent a fair amount of time seeing movies in theaters, though nothing close to the hours I clocked each week before the streaming era. As new movies increasingly became available online, the ones I ventured out for were mostly pre-release screenings, or re-releases of notable films. Afterward the director, producer or lead actors would take the stage for a Q&A, and though the questions were rarely insightful, I came to expect their presence. “Drive My Car”, which I saw at the beginning of December, was heightened by an appearance of its director, Ryusuke Hamaguchi. “First Reformed”, Paul Schrader’s underwhelming homage to Ingmar Bergman’s “Winter Light”, was improved by a post-screening discussion between Schrader and Ethan Hawke.
So it was with some eagerness that I crossed town for a screening of “Bullet Train”, the Brad Pitt action comedy that opens today. A movie about a bullet train, my favorite mode of transportation in Japan, was inducement enough, but a shinkansen with Brad Pitt as a hit man was a must-see. The post-screening Q&A didn’t include Pitt, but it did feature the movie’s director, David Leitch, who was Pitt’s stunt double on “Fight Club”, “Oceans’s Eleven” and a half dozen other films. Close enough.
It wasn’t just the Q&A that reminded me of old times. The pre-show boasted “Bullet Train” shirts delivered by T-shirt gun and an interview with the mascot Momomon, who was not only in the movie but ubiquitous throughout the train as a toy and on swag. Though not exactly verbal, Momomon managed to give a spirited account of acting with Brad Pitt through hand gestures and a volley of quacks.
As for the movie—spoiler alert!—it’s a cavalcade of cartoonish violence with a paucity of jokes. Pitt plays Ladybug, a hit man who, after considerable effort in therapy, has mostly renounced his violent past. As a concession to his newfound enlightenment, he boards the train without the gun his handler (Sandra Bullock, unseen until the end) has left for him in a locker at Tokyo Station. The bullet train turns out to be a charter populated by hit men and women, some of whom Ladybug has battled in the past. These include a pair of comical British brothers named Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry) and Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Kimura (Andrew Koji) a yakuza assassin avenging the attempted murder of his son by Prince (Joey King) the murderous daughter of a Russian mobster turned yakuza. Car to car mayhem ensues, and as much as Ladybug would prefer not to kill people he's in the thick of it.
The violence in “Bullet Train” is constant, and thus tedious. Although I enjoyed the fight between Ladybug and Lemon in the Quiet Car, the movie bored me long before the inevitable train-destroys-Kyoto finale. Pitt, a deft comedic actor, tries to make “Bullet Train” fun, but the best I can say about his Ladybug is that he’s a variation on the great Cliff Booth of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”. Like Cliff, Ladybug wants to overcome his violent past and be a better man. But life has other plans, and when push comes to shove Ladybug, like Cliff with his flamethrower, comes out swinging.