The review of Bullet Train, David Leitch's film with Brad Pitt, was presented at the Locarno Film Festival and released in cinemas on August 25th.
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| Image Credit: Sony Pictures |
Remember Pulp Fiction? In the center was a black briefcase. And, even today, almost 30 years later, we still don't know what the hell was in there. As we tell you in the review of Bullet Train, there is also a briefcase at the center of David Leitch's film with Brad Pitt, presented at the Locarno Film Festival and released in cinemas on August 25th. It's a curious briefcase: silver-colored, but with a sticker with a train on the handle. We will soon find out what's inside.
But, as you can imagine, this briefcase is nothing more than the MacGuffin that stirs desires, spite, revenge, and so on and so forth around her. Bullet Train is in fact a gangster movie, one of those postmodern action films born in the wake of Tarantino's cinema. Full of gimmicks, without a minute of boredom, of course, but also without real empathy for the characters. It's pure entertainment: it's fun, but you forget it shortly after leaving the room.
The plot: the train of desires goes in reverse
Ladybug (Brad Pitt) is an assassin who, according to him, has an open account with luck, and returns to the game after a break, determined to complete his task without problems after yet another bad job. As often happens, it seems like an easy job to recover the mysterious briefcase. But fate seems to have other plans: Ladybug finds herself, on the fastest train in the world, dealing with an anthology of lethal adversaries from all over the globe. And everyone seems to be dealing with that damn briefcase.
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| Image Credit: Sony Pictures |
A Tarantino-style film, but without Tarantino's writing
We didn't mention the Pulp Fiction briefcase in vain. Bullet Train is one of those films that, without Quentin Tarantino, perhaps would never have seen the light, and would never have been conceived. Because ever since the American director, of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, showed the world that another gangster cinema was possible, that a new postmodern noir cinema has come to life. The recipe for Bullet Train is that: high rate of violence, but stylized, constant irony aimed at downplaying everything, continuous jumps back and forth in time, and an underlying amorality, where there are no good and bad, and so yes side with whoever is the nicest.
The fact is that, as we have often seen, a Tarantino-style film without Tarantino's peculiar writing (tragic, brilliant, refined) is not the same thing. And this is where all his heirs stopped, from Robert Rodriguez himself to Joe Carnahan and Guy Ritchie. Bullet Train is more like a film from the latter than a film from the founder of the genre. Because, if in Tarantino the B-Movie rises to A-series cinema, in his followers B-series cinema is ennobled and reread, but it still remains B-series cinema.
B-Movie, but of the highest level
Let's be clear, Bullet Train is a B-Movie of the highest level, in terms of production, realization, and photography. The best idea of the film is to take a very black and bloody story, a story of mutual revenge, and paint it with the bright and pastel colors of Japanese Manga, of the fluorescent neon lights of today's Japan, immersing it in the modernity of the most advanced and technological train that there is. Thus, a story of violence and base instincts as ancient as the world is staged in a hi-tech, elegant, and smart place that can't get any smarter.
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| Image Credit: Sony Pictures |
Between Murder on the Orient Express and Thomas & Friends
The train is a very particular place to make a film. From the classic Murder on the Orient Express to other postmodern products such as Snowpiercer, it is a closed, yet dynamic environment. You can't get down, so you can't escape, you're forced into one place. But you can move inside it, in a movement that is however limited, back and forth, in a horizontal sense. David Leitch uses this movement and train environments well.
Speaking of Agatha Christie, Bullet Train works like one of her detective stories: few characters, all very characterized and all with a secret, stuck in a closed place. It's the hyperviolent and postmodern version of one of her detective stories, sure, but the structure is the same. Leitch, then, is good at being ironic about the theme of trains by continually quoting Thomas the Tank Engine, a famous children's cartoon, from which one of the protagonists, Lemon, draws life lessons.
Brad Pitt is in great shape
If Bullet Train is not at the level of a Tarantino film, Brad Pitt certainly is, he is in really great form, and is the ironic and mocking one that we loved in the American auteur's films, from Inglourious Basterds to Once Upon a Time once in… Hollywood. It's been a while since we saw him on the big screen and we found him at his best, funny and entertained.
From the moment he enters the scene, with his casual tourist look, fisherman's cap, sneakers, and casual clothes, we understand the aplomb he will bring to the film. His being a scoundrel, but also kind, and surreal enough to be in a hyperbolic film, but still be a credible character. The duets on the phone with his client, Maria (Sandra Bullock), are anthology-worthy. And much of the credit for the success of Bullet Train goes to him.