Bullet Train (1/10)

by Tony Medley

125 minutes.

R.

I would like to think that this thing is a satire on the ridiculous movies Hollywood foists on its audience. But, alas, I surmise they are serious because they advertise it as a “non-stop thrill-ride through modern-day Japan.” I fear that they really think this violent, indeed idiotic, creation is funny and entertaining. Not!

Directed by David Leitch from a screenplay by Zak Olkewicz based on a book by Kataro Isaka, Brad Pitt plays Ladybug, a happy-go-lucky assassin who finds himself in a convoluted situation aboard a Japanese bullet train. Lots of people are out to kill other people but they deal with each other in an oh, so friendly and joking manner; ugh!

It is nothing but quisiquilious tarradiddle (pardon my sesquipedalianism; oops, there I go again) filled with graphic violence, the slaughter of innumerable human beings played for laughs, and other moral lapses.

Hollywood loves to inflict gruesome violence on its audiences, which desensitizes impressionable viewers to it and makes some viewers more prone to inflicting it. Maybe it’s not the cause of the violence we see today, but movies certainly influence the actions of society, which is why tobacco companies paid Hollywood to show as many of its characters (Humphrey Bogart, who died young of lung cancer, is a prime example of movie smoking) lighting up (to wit: Paul Henreid lighting two cigarettes and handing one romantically to Bette Davis in 1942’s Now, Voyager). Don’t tell me that movies don’t influence actions and the way Hollywood glorifies and belittles grisly mass murder is grossly irresponsible.

Leitch also directed Deadpool2 (2018), about which I wrote, “Because this is a parody on superhero movies, it should be something I would like, given my loathing of the genre. Oh, there are some inside jokes, lots of them, about movies and music, and other things. Probably worse are the self-congratulatory winks it gives itself throughout.” That pretty well describes what Leitch has done here.

This movie is annoying from the opening. Both my assistant and I were ready to leave after five minutes, but I had to stay to write the review. You, on the other hand, don’t have to go.