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| Bullet Train |
Bullet Train (Bullet Train, United States/2022). Direction: David Leitch. Cast: Brad Pitt, Aaron Johnson, Bad Bunny, Sandra Bullock, Joey King, Aaron Taylor Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Zazie Beetz, Michael Shannon, Logan Lerman, Masi Oka, and Andrew Koji. Screenplay: Zak Olkewicz, based on the novel by Kotaro Isaka. Music: Dominic Lewis. Photography: Jonathan Sela. Distributor: UIP (Sony). Duration: 126 minutes. Suitable for over 16 years.
“The train has 10 Economy class cars and six First class cars. And remember: at each station for a minute”, says the anonymous voice of a woman whom she nicknames “Catarina”. But "Catarina" is not a lady, as the nominal election would suggest, but a hitman played with sheer nonchalance by a Brad Bitt increasingly turned to roles loaded with comedy. Whether that nonchalance carries over to the rest of the film is another matter.
Pitt's mission seems simple, but he quickly begins to get complicated. Already in the first station, he does not manage to get off. Neither in the second nor in the third (in one of them by the work and grace of the Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny). Theirs will be, therefore, to resist in the best possible way the journey aboard the train of the title between Tokyo and Kyoto, in which more than half a dozen contract killers coincide with pending accounts between them and individual missions that, however, they are very related to each other.
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| Bullet Train |
Thus, for example, two of them must take care of the son of the person who hired them and arrives at their destination with a briefcase full of money, while another, in turn, is ordered to assassinate that man, while a fourth aspires to keep the loot and a fifth, the only one of Japanese origin, is obliged to do his part if he does not want his little son hospitalized to be murdered. In the middle of that eggplant, Pitt is revolando pineapples, kicks, bullets, and when element is put in front of him.
The director's name is David Leitch and his most famous antecedent is Deadpool 2. If the second adventure of the superhero with the burned face gave him a cool and leftover air, here he travels similar paths and adds visual tricks and a montage at times frenetic that refers to the first stage of Guy Ritchie (Pitt's presence only reminds us of Snatch: Pigs and Diamonds) and visceral violence very much in line with contemporary action films about "normal men" subjected to abnormal situations, with the very good No one in the lead.
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| Bullet Train |
But not only Ritchie drinks Bullet Train, because the dialogues between the murderers, which swing between absurdity and sarcasm, seem to be taken from one by Quentin Tarantino. A situation that perfectly illustrates the main problem of this film based on the book by Kōtarō Isaka: an operation based solely on the accumulation of situations and references and the reiteration that generates a double sensation of circularity and stretching, as if the slogan had been that the footage exceeded two hours at any cost.
The latter is helped by an ending that uses the typical arsenal of digital effects so typical of productions with massive aspirations, which throws overboard the entire atmosphere of confinement that had been built up until then. Pitt is indeed perfect in his role as a caballero hitman who seems to be beyond everything. As true as that he is not enough to make a good movie of Bullet Train.
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