Anime Guy Ritchie with a streak of Good Value brand Tarantino, Bullet Train is an assault on the senses; a contemporary action-comedy-thriller-western-samurai movie for the Marvel and TikTok age of cinema. Did I have a good time? Absolutely, this is the movie version of a rollercoaster punctuated with more cameos than is comfortable and a sense of wit ripped right from Taika Waititi's Thor notebook. But is it good? Well, I guess that's up to the viewer and their tolerance for the sporadic, scatter brained, 7-second-attention-span production utilised here. Check your brain at the sliding doors and let this train whisk you away to Kyoto, you'll certainly have a good time getting there, but whether you'll have something memorable to take with you from the journey is another question entirely. Good popcorn fun.
Edit: Just finished another viewing and I think I prefered it the second time round. Lots of the foreshadowing is clearer and the details of the story click into place much earlier on, making the central plot feel much tighter than it did initially. There is definitely still a pacing issue with the intro firing on all cylinders just to grind to a halt around the hour mark. If the initial blowout of exposition was held to a little later in the runtime, the brakes wouldn't feel so harsh when the speed of everything slows so rapidly during the second and third act. But then again, that fits with the titular Bullet Train theme and it's eventual fate, so maybe it's intentional. I'll bump to an 8/10 because I got much more enjoyment from it on a second viewing. Great film, but another pass in the editing booth could have potentially made this a 9 or a 10.
Review by XiofireBlockedParent2022-11-06T21:16:34Z— updated 2022-12-03T23:59:40Z
Anime Guy Ritchie with a streak of Good Value brand Tarantino, Bullet Train is an assault on the senses; a contemporary action-comedy-thriller-western-samurai movie for the Marvel and TikTok age of cinema. Did I have a good time? Absolutely, this is the movie version of a rollercoaster punctuated with more cameos than is comfortable and a sense of wit ripped right from Taika Waititi's Thor notebook. But is it good? Well, I guess that's up to the viewer and their tolerance for the sporadic, scatter brained, 7-second-attention-span production utilised here. Check your brain at the sliding doors and let this train whisk you away to Kyoto, you'll certainly have a good time getting there, but whether you'll have something memorable to take with you from the journey is another question entirely. Good popcorn fun.
Edit: Just finished another viewing and I think I prefered it the second time round. Lots of the foreshadowing is clearer and the details of the story click into place much earlier on, making the central plot feel much tighter than it did initially. There is definitely still a pacing issue with the intro firing on all cylinders just to grind to a halt around the hour mark. If the initial blowout of exposition was held to a little later in the runtime, the brakes wouldn't feel so harsh when the speed of everything slows so rapidly during the second and third act. But then again, that fits with the titular Bullet Train theme and it's eventual fate, so maybe it's intentional. I'll bump to an 8/10 because I got much more enjoyment from it on a second viewing. Great film, but another pass in the editing booth could have potentially made this a 9 or a 10.