Bullet Train: For a few years now, summer movie theaters have been falling into a rut where the big premieres are limited to the great delivery of superheroes on duty and a good handful of films for the little ones, displacing other entertainment films proposals to the platforms. streaming, and it’s been a while since we came across a movie like ‘Bullet Train‘, a wild action comedy that, however, does not give up the great show.
From the hand of David Leitch, the hand behind ‘Atomic’ or ‘Deadpool 2’, it is not difficult to imagine what kind of film we are facing, but what is surprising about the project is its high-class casting and a more generous display of media than what we can find in similar offers such as the great ‘Gunpowder Milkshake’ and even the resounding ‘No one’. It is logical to think that these budget steps have to do with the presence of Brad Pitt having a great time, who has probably entrusted the studio to release it globally.
Antidote against Marvel and DC
And it is not little to say in a scenario in which the public has only gone to theaters to see episodes of the Marvel serial, and is still stuck in the idea of the blockbuster as part of something bigger that never quite arrives. If the shared universe gimmick allows for interconnections and a much larger story, it also offers a long-term complication and commitment that ends up taking its toll in the fourth phase or the third section of the fifth movement. The cinema has been fed up with itself.
Perhaps that is why this year the most stimulating films of other genres have achieved the strange communion of audiences and critics, with the cases of the supernatural ‘Elvis’, the necessary ‘Everything at once everywhere’ and the vertigo phenomenon of ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, among many other proposals that have responded to the backlash of the monopoly of tights and capes such as ‘Ambulance’ or this ‘Bullet Train’, which rescue modes from another time to spit it back with extra unprejudiced fun.
Leitch’s film continues in the modes of criminal activity with British overtones and Tarantino heritage —those anachronistic labels to introduce the characters—, full of rock music that nobody listens to today and an attitude of a scoundrel movie from the mid-2000s that, however, do not bury most of its virtues: a vertiginous narration, well-constructed characters and a tangled puzzle of situations that generate several lines of simultaneous tension.
The return of crazy Brad Pitt from ’12 monkeys’ and ‘Snatch’
And it is that if the protagonist of Pitt is a weirdo that we want to see all the time, they do not miss his large cast of secondary, such as the memorable Lemon and Tangerine, the fleeting butcher of Bad Bunny, or the enigmatic anime bear. Everyone is on a moving train but there is no situation like ‘Unstoppable’ or ‘Speed’, in fact, part of the fun of development is waiting at each stop to see what surprise awaits the characters.
It’s not a good idea to give away any of the plots, but you can expect a good tangle of crime people interconnected in the most unlikely ways, lots of violence, untimely flashbacks, blood, funny jokes, some not-so-funny, hand fights, knife fights, gunshots, explosions, macabre humor, killers, hit men, slapstick humor, yakuza, cartels, unlikely and well-placed cameos, and an explosion of Kawai imagery to satisfy any otaku.
More than two hours at full speed fly by and that makes us forget during that time that the cinema designed for the big screen has to have a mortgage to a brand or franchise. ‘Bullet Train’ is a necessary gore-filled sprawl that you didn’t know you needed this summer, the backlash to the monolithic cascade of Marvel and DC, and the definitive confirmation that the great show is lived differently on the movie screen and knows otherwise without paying the tithe of superpowers.
