David Leitch’s action comedy Bullet Train starring Brad Pitt doesn’t hit UK theaters until Wednesday and US theaters until Friday, but critics are not exactly loving the ‘high-octane bore.’
Many reviewers singled out their praise for the 58-year-old Oscar winner, the fight sequences, and performances from Hiroyuki Sanada, Brian Tyree Henry, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson – but not much else.
Reviews are in! David Leitch’s action comedy Bullet Train starring Brad Pitt (R) doesn’t hit UK theaters until Wednesday and US theaters until Friday, but critics are not exactly loving the ‘high-octane bore’
Rooney added: ‘It’s dispiriting to see so many capable actors put to such poor use…We don’t care about who gets pounded to a pulp or shot to pieces because there are no characters to root for – good guys or bad.’
‘It’s essentially a live-action cartoon, with high-profile cameos sprinkled in for added laughs,’ Debruge noted.
‘Stylistically, Leitch is trying his darnedest to channel the likes of Tarantino and Ritchie, even if the dialogue and mock-British accents aren’t nearly strong enough to earn such comparisons.’
Standouts: Many reviewers singled out their praise for the 58-year-old Oscar winner, the fight sequences, and performances from Hiroyuki Sanada (pictured), Brian Tyree Henry, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson – but not much else
‘There are no characters to root for’: THR’s David Rooney called the Japan-set two-hour flick ‘soulless’ and wrote it was ‘so busy delivering violent action with a self-satisfied wink that its contorted plotting and one-note characters get real tedious real fast’
‘It’s essentially a live-action cartoon’: Variety’s Peter Debruge called Bullet Train ‘a Kill Bill-like mix of martial arts, manga, and gabby hitman movie influences, minus the vision or wit that implies’
‘s Todd Gilchrist loathed the ‘improbability’ of staff and passengers sharing the train with the hitmen as well as the timespan of the two-hour journey between Tokyo and Kyoto seemingly lasting all night.
‘This film is not just bloated, tedious, dim-witted, and glib, it’s also redundant,’ Gilchrist blasted.
‘What proves to be more offensive is the film’s unskilled attempt to inject seriousness into what should have been a cheeky summer distraction. It’s fine for a movie about a bunch of competing killers to itself place no value on human life, and even to joyfully indulge in that kind of nihilism, but the way the filmmakers inject a sense of pathos feels about as earnest and meaningful as an airport gift shop souvenir before the flight home from some far-flung foreign country.’
‘It’s not just bloated, tedious, dim-witted, and glib, it’s also redundant’: AV Club’s Todd Gilchrist loathed the ‘improbability’ of staff and passengers sharing the train with the hitmen as well as the timespan of the two-hour journey between Tokyo and Kyoto seemingly lasting all night
‘None of the characters, Pitt’s included, remotely resembles actual human beings’: Deadline’s Pete Hammond also called Bullet Train a ‘live-action cartoon’ that ‘felt repetitive after a while’
‘It’s an airless affair’: The Wrap’s Alonso Duralde said the big-screen adaptation of Kōtarō Isaka’s 2010 novel Maria Beetle a ‘pretty much leaves no cliché of this subgenre unturned’
‘I can’t say the thing ever goes off the rails because it never was on the rails to begin with,’ Hammond wrote.
‘It all seems like an attempt to draw an undemanding international audience with a well-chosen and game cast that has something for everyone who wants to submit to mindless adventure. None of the characters, Pitt’s included, remotely resembles actual human beings but they give it the old college try.’
‘s Alonso Duralde said the big-screen adaptation of Kōtarō Isaka’s 2010 novel Maria Beetle a ‘pretty much leaves no cliché of this subgenre unturned.’
‘It’s an airless affair. It’s clear in the first 20 minutes that this movie operates in such a vacuum of smug artificiality that nothing that transpires could possibly matter,’ Durlade wrote.
‘Bullet Train is not a good film’: IndieWire’s David Ehrlich gave it a C grade, calling it an ‘over-cranked story that feels like what might happen if someone typed “Guy Ritchie anime” into DALL-E 2’
‘It can’t quite hide its lack of originality’: Screen Daily’s Tim Grierson called it a ‘self-consciously hip lumbering locomotive’ that ‘proves to be neither hilariously amoral nor liberatingly violent’
‘Crash and burn’: The Daily Beast’s Nick Schager labeled Bullet Train ‘dead on arrival’ and said it ‘more than slightly resembles Joe Carnahan’s 2006 fiasco Smokin’ Aces’
‘And rather than lean into next-level snarkiness, Bullet Train builds to a place where, as the bodies start piling up, we’re suddenly supposed to care about at least some of these characters and their relationships to each other.’
‘Bullet Train is not a good film, but Pitt is having a truly palpable amount of fun in it,’ Ehrlich wrote.
‘And the energy that radiates off of him as he fights Bad Bunny over an explosive briefcase or styles his hair with the blow dryer function of a Japanese toilet is somehow magnetic enough to convince us that we’re having fun, too. Even though we usually aren’t.’
