Bullet Train (2022) directed by David Leitch is a masterfully crafted film starring Brad Pitt as the main lead. It’s an action-packed comedy-drama (or “dramedy”) film with tons of enjoyable yet serious scenes. It’s an intricate movie having multiple storylines layered on top of each other that all come together at the end making for a meaningful and most importantly, an enjoyable watching experience.
Plot
*WARNING: spoilers ahead!
The movie follows the unlucky assassin Ladybug (Brad Pitt) tasked with retrieving a suitcase from a train in modern-day Japan. With such a simple-sounding premise, watching the movie proves to be a very complex watch, making you have to use your maximum amount of attention and remember a lot of minute details most would gloss over. For the full two hours and six minutes of this film, the plot stayed substantial all the way through keeping you on the edge of your seat hoping your favorite characters wouldn’t be killed off.
Characters/actors
When it came to the characters in this movie, most of all they were believable and solid throughout the whole duration. Brad Pitt gave a great performance as Ladybug playing a more timid and laid-back character with strong moral principles and beliefs.
To me, the most enjoyable characters on screen were Tangerine and Lemon who were played by Aaron Johnson and Brian Henry; they gave a good balance of comedic banter amongst each other, which made every scene containing them very enjoyable to watch.
I enjoyed the fact that these characters weren’t too over-the-top and had a more emotional scene together toward the end of the movie. Each character benefitted from each scene with the help of camera angles and effects.
Cinematography
When it comes to cinematography, this film was not afraid to be different and act experimental with any of its shots. The most memorable scene I can take away from this film was a fifteen-second long (or more) storyline showing the life of a water bottle. As the viewer, your point of view was the water bottle and you were following and seeing where the bottle was going to end up. It was a very creative and (probably) difficult shot.
Overview/final thoughts
Throughout the movie, there are a lot of creative choices made by the director to help show the passion being put into this project. This helped give the film soul that I feel a lot of films are lacking nowadays. Most want to follow an “expected” format and don’t feel like detracting from that. This type of thing is extremely evident in modern-day Marvel films or blatant cash-grab sequels of preexisting franchises. For the creativity shown in this movie–which I haven’t seen much of in a while– I’d like to encourage people to see this film. Watching and promoting this movie would help studios give chances to films like these that have a lot of creativity but have people too scared to invest in this type of project. If you are looking for a movie to watch over break, I recommend it to everyone.
disclaimer: this movie contains violence and profanity. You should always check movie rating guidelines to determine whether or not you would be comfortable watching it. The R-Hi does not endorse any film and watching is at the viewer’s discretion.
Featured Image Credit: Sony Pictures