Bullet Train – Film Review

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.

A brand new action comedy film from David Leitch – the same man behind Deadpool 2 and Atomic Blonde – sounded, on paper, like a recipe for greatness. Sadly, though, his latest film Bullet Train is anything but great. As a matter of fact, it’s easily one of the worst blockbuster movies of the year. It’s completely overstuffed, hugely boring, highly predictable, and relies way too much on comedy that simply isn’t funny.

The script from Zak Olkewicz is outrageously sloppy, and it’s a genuine shock that not many people are talking about this. If you look up the quick synopsis for this film, the internet would have you think it’s a simplistic story of an assassin with other assassins on the train and the entire movie is an all-out action spectacle, but this isn’t true. Yes, the film does follow an assassin who happens to be on a train with other assassins, but Olkewicz implements so many subplots to the point of ridiculousness. Even the main story can be hard to follow thanks to mumbly dialogue.

There’s also a disappointing amount of exposition scattered throughout the movie, particularly relating to the character The White Death. We basically only learn things about him through flashback sequences which are plentiful here. One minute we will be watching Brad Pitt‘s character and then the next, we’ll cut to a scene of what The White Death was doing many years ago that made him so intimidating.

For almost the entire movie, the story makes no sense, and even when you feel as if you’re finally putting the pieces together, it ultimately ends up being completely unsatisfying, and you realize that, yes, the overall story is way too generic. The film is also outrageously long for what was supposed to be a fun, action comedy at two hours and six minutes. A lot of this is spent on character backstories and scenes featuring the worst character in the movie, Lemon.

He’s basically just a super macho badass type character who is absolutely obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine and all of his fictional friends. He finds a way to bring Thomas into every conversation and even says that he can tell what type of Thomas character a person is. According to him, Diesel is the worst of the worst, so we know that if he labels anybody a Diesel, they’re going to die.

This goofy character felt way too out of place for this kind of movie and he quite literally talks about Thomas in nearly every scene to the point where it became unbearably annoying after about the third or fourth mention. Something about this film that does deserve praise, however, is the performances across the board, namely from Brad Pitt who does his best with the weak script he was given.

But easily the real surprise here was Joey King as “The Prince,” who is the most mysterious character on the roster. She seems to be just an innocent schoolgirl that gets stuck on the train with the assassins, but is she really as innocent as she says? Unfortunately, King almost always gets stuck being in terrible movies and this film isn’t any different, but the one constant about King is that she’ll always deliver a great performance, and here is no exception.

For those who only want to watch Bullet Train for its action sequences, it’s probably best if you stay at home. While there are some fun action scenes here and there, that’s really the heart of the problem – they’re scattered everywhere. There’s a portion of the movie where there was no action sequence for about thirty minutes. It’s all just a disappointing ride that you shouldn’t go on. Bullet Train is definitely a Diesel.