The result is chaotic and drawn-out and faintly ridiculous instead of elegant and engaging.
The result is chaotic and drawn-out and faintly ridiculous instead of elegant and engaging.
B rad Pitt makes a fine entrance in Bullet Train, the latest action-comedy (with a heart!) from David Leitch (Deadpool 2). As “Staying Alive” starts playing, we see a pair of shoes making their way through the big city. Only instead of John Travolta’s shiny leather oxfords from Saturday Night Fever, we get a pair of plain white sneakers. And as below, so above: Pitt’s head is adorned with a thoroughly basic white bucket hat. Travolta’s Tony Manero was dead set on looking department-store sharp even when being sent to fetch a can of paint — you never know when you might meet a pretty lady out there on the street, and you’ll want to make a good impression.
Pitt’s Ladybug (his code name, because ladybugs are lucky) is past all that, rather like Pitt himself. There aren’t many movie stars who wear their movie-star good looks with such a casual air — almost bordering on contempt. It’s not just a willingness to play against handsome, whether it’s adopting a wandering eye in 12 Monkeys, or hiding behind a bad haircut and worse glasses in The Big Short. The attitude comes through even when he looks great. George Clooney in Ocean’s Eleven: Yeah, I’m handsome, and I know it helps. Brad Pitt in Ocean’s Eleven: Yeah, I’m handsome. Who cares?
Ladybug’s handler informs us that this is his first job back after an extended period of self-care. A former assassin, he’s now limiting himself to snatch-and-grab jobs — in this case, a silver briefcase aboard the titular Japanese train. This is the “new and improved me, more accepting, more calm, less reactive,” he says. Oh-ho-ho: Brad Pitt, an actor who has not only worked less of late, but also given interviews about getting sober, playing a professional criminal who is back in the game, but still hoping to hang on to whatever self-improvement he has achieved. Is this going to be a deeper version of John Wick, which Leitch co-directed back in 2014? Is Ladybug going to have to choose between personal happiness and professional excellence? Are Pitt’s own struggles going to lend gravitas to what might otherwise be a charismatic performance in a forgettable thrill ride? Or will his constant bits of therapy talk — “Negative attitude, negative outcome,” “Have the courage to listen,” etc. — amount to little more than a jokey tic? I probably shouldn’t give the answer away, but did you see Deadpool 2?
Oddly, Pitt’s parodic footwear isn’t what opens the film. Rather, it begins with a sober, arresting image: yellow sunlight pouring into a hospital room, silhouetting a seated body hunched in anguish. It’s The Father (characters get titles instead of names), miserably keeping watch over his young son, who is clinging to life after having been pushed off a building. The Father’s own father arrives on the scene, and proceeds to start scolding: “A father protects his family. Where were you?” He ends this bit of tough love with a cryptic conclusion: “Who knows what horrible fate your bad luck has saved you from?” Whatever it means, and however Father’s luck is going to make his path cross Ladybug’s, it’s enough to give us hope that Bullet Train will be about something more than a violent game of Who’s Got the Briefcase Full of Cash? — namely, the interplay of luck and fate, and the human struggle to succeed in spite of them.
Ladybug swears he’s got bad luck, no matter what his handler says about how things ultimately work out for him. Prince, the pink-suited young woman with the big eyes and the helpless expression? She’s got good luck, even if she doesn’t have good intentions. The Old Man from the opening is a worker, but remains serenely confident in fate’s power to order events aright. And the mysterious (in terms of both identity and motivation) big baddie, who goes by The White Death, is sure that if you do not control your fate, then it will control you. Karma makes a belated appearance. And for a while, it feels like all these forces are headed for a satisfying, dramatic collision. A movie of ideas, this isn’t — it’s called Bullet Train, not Journey into Fate — but at least there’s something to mull as you watch Ladybug struggle to survive one deadly attack after another from the various forces arrayed against him: The Wolf, The Hornet, and oh yes, Lemon and Tangerine.
Lemon and Tangerine are a pair of hit men, one black (Brian Tyree Henry) and one white (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who have been given the assignment of rescuing The White Death’s kidnapped son and delivering both him and a case full of ransom money back to Mr. Death. (Yes, you guessed it — the same case Ladybug has been sent to snag.) Lemon and Tangerine are full of mannered banter, all delivered with the same matter-of-fact tone, whether it concerns the selection of their code names, the usefulness of classifying people via reference to characters from Thomas the Tank Engine, or precisely how many people they killed on their latest mission. It is difficult to watch Lemon and Tangerine, who occupy at least as much of the film’s psychic space as Ladybug, and not be put in mind of Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta’s characters in Pulp Fiction. Hit men, clever talk, dangerous boss, important case, casual violence . . . and yet, these two are the emotional heart of the film: co-workers who are also close friends, unburdened by conscience or questions of fate, just looking to get the job done and get out alive.
People will no doubt talk about Pitt’s charm as one of Bullet Train’s saving graces. It’s true: He looks like he’s having fun here, and so we want to have fun right along with him. But I came away thinking that Lemon and Tangerine had enough real humanity going on to keep them from being mere echoes of Tarantino, and that Taylor-Johnson might have the makings of a star.
So much for the heart of the film. What about the head? What about those ideas headed for a collision? Collide they do. But the result is chaotic and drawn-out and faintly ridiculous instead of elegant and engaging. I will not use the term “train wreck.” But by the end, the joke is on anyone who was looking for something more than a wild ride.
