Bullet Train

A bunch of assassins end up on the same Japanese bullet train with essentially the same mission, unaware of each other. Brad Pitt leads up the cast and Joey King, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry and Michael Shannon also star.

Bad accents aplenty, Bullet Train nevertheless entertains as a non-stop comedy action film. Leitch draws unashamedly from early Guy Ritchie films and, while not all the jokes are that funny, for the most part he pulls it off with gusto.

This pulled middling reviews when it came out but all I see here is an amusing and very well directed film that is mercifully not tied to any sort of IP or franchise. The casting of non-Asian actors caused some controversy (perhaps rightly so since it’s based on a book with all Japanese characters) but the international cast (not pretending to be Japanese, I should add) in a Japanese setting gives it a unique and off-beat tone.

Far from perfect, but this is still a solid example of the intelligent and coherent action we’ve come to expect from David Leitch.