But as the script adds new fighters to the mix, and establishes that they're all tangentially connected, "Bullet Train" morphs into a half-assed but sincere statement on fate, luck, and karma-and Ladybug's constant (and often humorously annoying) comments on those subjects, voiced in discussions through a handler (Sandra Bullock's Maria Beetle, heard via earpiece), start to feel like an instruction manual for grokking what the movie is "actually" up to. The plot initially seems goal-driven, revolving around the comatose grandson and the metal briefcase. They believe the person responsible is on the train, mingling with all the other agents of death. Hiroyuki Sanada is "The Elder," a greying but still lethal assassin connected to the White Death, and Andrew Koji is " The Father"-The Elder's son, obviously they're out for vengeance because somebody pushed The Elder's grandson off a department store roof, putting him in a coma. His face isn't shown until the end of the story (it's more fun for the audience to resist Googling who plays him, because his casting is one of the best surprises in the whole thing). The White Death is a Russian who took over a Yakuza family. Brian Tyree Henry and Aaron Taylor-Johnson (who's groomed to look like the evil drunk Begbie from the original " Trainspotting") are brothers who have gone from mission to mission racking up a body count seemingly in the triple digits, and now find themselves on the train protecting the briefcase and escorting the depressed twentysomething wastrel son ( Logan Lerman) of a terrifying crime boss known as the White Death. Joey King is "The Prince," who poses as an innocent schoolgirl appalled by the cruelty of men, but immediately reveals herself as a clever and ruthless engine of destruction. Ladybug's fellow killers are a bomber crew of homicidal oddballs. He's replacing another assassin who became unavailable at the last minute, and he refuses his handler's advice to carry a gun because he just got out of anger management and has renounced killing. They tend to have tragic-sentimental backstories or be purely malevolent-and inevitably, 30 years after the great Tarantino realignment of the early nineties, most of them are chatterboxes who will monologue at anyone who doesn't point a gun at their head and order them to shut up, and the tone mixes winking black comedy and poker-faced pulp.īrad Pitt stars as Ladybug, a former assassin ordered to board the train, steal a briefcase, and get off. All are either paid killers or otherwise violent individuals connected with the world of crime, and the majority either have grudges against one of the other characters or are the object of a grudge and trying to escape the consequences of past actions. Its characters are a touch abstract as well, and knowingly comic-bookish. The story takes place on a bullet train careening across Japan, but most of the movie was shot on green-screened sets, and the cityscapes and countrysides that the train rides through are mainly miniatures and CGI. "Bullet Train" is an action film that could easily have been an animated movie, and often looks and feels like one.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |