Bullet Train Explosion Review: A Failure To Accelerate

Bullet Train Explosion misses the mark despite its high-octane premise and a director who understands how to use spectacle to deliver scathing messaging about governmental ineptitude. Directed by Shinji Higuchi (Shin Godzilla), his latest lacks bite. For a name as goofily on the nose as this, we expect fun and mayhem as characters rush around to try and survive while maintaining public decorum. Instead, the film waffles about for half the runtime in dire need of a dopamine hit. It has the speed but no thrills.

A sequel to the 1975 film The Bullet Train starring Sonny Chiba and Ken Takakura and one of the films to inspire the ’90s classic Speed, Bullet Train has a lot of promise, but can’t deliver. It sets itself up to delight in the absurdity of its premise. Still, it ends up stifling itself with shrill performances, a weak script that lavishes far too much praise on the integrity of a corporation, and some bizarre direction. When the film begins, it adopts the cadence and aesthetic of an ad, which would be clever if the film were in on the joke. Instead, it tees us up for what’s to come: an overly glossy action flick that’s all shine and no grit.

Tsuyoshi Kusanagi stars as Kazuya Takaichi, the first-line manager of a Shinkansen bound from Shin-Aomori to Tokyo. What’s meant to be a peaceful commute dissolves into chaos when a terrorist calls the Japan Railway Company, informing them that bombs have been placed on the bottom of the bullet train and will detonate if it slows below 100 kph. The two-hour-plus film follows as authorities and civilians on the train race against time to try and save everyone on board.

Bullet Train Explosion needed a better ensemble.

The ensemble is rounded out by a colorful group of characters, but they fail to inspire any connection. Every one of them exists at some level of extreme. There’s Mitsuru Todoroki (Jun Kaname), a wealthy influencer who uses his status to raise funds for the ransom money. There’s Goto, a disgraced man who once worked at a helicopter factory where their helicopters crashed at an elementary school. Yuko Kagami (Machiko Ono) is a politician who has been getting some heat lately. At the same time, high schooler Yuzuki Onodera (Hana Toyoshima) questions why Kazuya is so ready to help even the worst of humanity.

Despite the unlikely ensemble, none of the actors leave an impression besides a few scenes from Toyoshima. Kusanagi, in particular, delivers a rough performance. As the lead protagonist, the character never truly earns his hero status. Instead, he points and postures, but there’s no depth beyond his hat and badge. He’s a figurehead to build a film around, and the construction is flimsy.

There’s no harm in a simple, straightforward premise. The main appeal of Bullet Train Explosion is the hope that it will be silly and broad, as the name suggests, with some off-the-rails madness. But it only truly manages that level of inertia at the midway point, and it’s brief. A sequence where passengers must cross a rickety bridge from one train car to another is wonderfully tense. While it’s a largely bloodless film, the sequence presents danger. If someone falls, they die.

The film needed to lean into its innate silliness.

Tsuyoshi Kusanagi and Hana Toyoshima in Bullet Train Explosion

But Bullet Train Explosion doesn’t want to be just a big, dumb action flick. The themes and storylines it proposes are interesting on paper, such as the characters’ desperate desire to absolve themselves from their guilt and trauma and society’s capacity to act to protect others selflessly. These themes are given ample room to shine, but the ideas don’t work with the necessary potency due to uninteresting characters and flat performances.

The film is at its strongest when it examines the large-scale effects of this grandiose declaration of humanity’s failings. There are nuggets of intrigue and care, and the back half of the story is certainly better than the first due to how it amplifies the stakes. But getting there is tedious as the film struggles to maintain our attention.

Bullet Train Explosion has a fun premise, but is stifled by its building blocks. Cold and detached, the film’s lack of energy bogs it down. It could have been better with a tighter edit and stronger performances than Netflix’s dumping ground. Alas, it doesn’t quite reach big-screen material.

Bullet Train Explosion is available now on Netflix.

Bullet Train Explosion

6/10

TL;DR

Bullet Train Explosion has a fun premise, but is stifled by its building blocks. Cold and detached, the film’s lack of energy bogs it down.

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Bullet Train Explosion needed a better ensemble.

The film needed to lean into its innate silliness.

Bullet Train Explosion

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