Bullet Train

 It's been a long time since I've seen a movie as desperate to be hip and funny as Bullet Train. It fails on both counts. But more disappointingly, it doesn't deliver a lot of great action, either.

 This is specially disappointing, as it's directed by David Leitch, who with co-director Chad Stahelski led the western action film renaissance with John Wick (Fury Road came a year later and stole their thunder(dome), but that's no slight on their impact).
 Leitch went on to do Atomic Blonde and Deadpool 2 -both excellent- but this is far closer to Hobbs and Shaw: unfunny, bloated, and so fucking full of itself.

 Brad Pitt plays an operative code-named Ladybug who is sent to board the titular bullet train in Tokyo to retrieve a McGuffin stored somewhere on board. Brad Pitt's schtick (and everyone has a schtick here, it's that sort of movie) is that he's a kind goofball motormouth with a metaphysical, chronical run of bad luck, and a hard-on for self-help.

 The briefcase, it turns out, contains a buttload of money in bills and bullion to pay for the ransom of your stereotypical badass yakuza overlord's son. As it turns out, there's a few assassins, mercenaries and assorted miscreants on board the train, and most of the movie's overlong second act consists of untangling all the parties' motivations as the fight and make alliances with each other.

 Once the plot is untangled, then the movie finally settles down a little bit. With clear(er) motivations and on-track to a final confrontation against the big bad, the movie gets a lot better and finally delivers on some cool action, but by that point it's too little, too late.

 Because to get there you need to get through a gauntlet of cutesy humor and running gags (that name is doubly deserved here- they are run into the fucking ground!) delivered with an obnoxious grin and wink by a script trying so hard to be cool and clever that you can taste the flopsweat.
 There are some good gags in the mix, and some others that I appreciate on paper, but the miss-to-hit ratio of the jokes is unacceptable. The tone of the movie is even worse - it feels like it's pointing out every little thing it does and singling it out for praise. The script itself is built around fate and luck, which is fine but means that the plot is built around little connections and coincidences that the movie will highlight and then get back to with quick flashbacks when it comes up again. Like an annoying, eager-to-please kid showing you his... fidget spinner collection or whatever kids are into these days. And of course, if you think about details beyond the ones that the plot specifically set up it all comes tumbling down, but hey.

 I personally didn't find the action very appealing; it's gruesome, fun and it's always clear what's happening to whom, but a lot of the connective tissue within the fights seems missing- mostly I assume to focus on funny (or "funny") beats and a quick rhythm. I appreciate they're trying something new a bit outside the 87North signature style, but until some bits close to the end I just didn't think it was memorable at all. 

 There's a lot to like in this movie, even while it's being kind of insufferable. Pitt and Bryan Tyree Henry (PaperBoiiii!) are excellent and often funny even when saddled some truly dire lines, which is a testament to their talent and charisma. Zazie Beetz barely registers. Poor Hiroyuki Sanada (TwilightSamuraiiii!) just gets to look cool with a cane/katana combo and provide exposition, but he hogs all the best action scenes.
 The rest of the cast don't fare so well - Aaron Taylor Johnson is kind of annoying in a kind of James MacAvoy type role, and I really disliked Joey King as a teen sociopath. Happy to chalk that down to the script rather than the actors, as even the conceit for King's character is pretty lame.
 Oh, and we also get surprise Michael Shannon! He proceeds to Shannon things up admirably, but he's been better deployed elsewhere. 

Surprise Michael Shannon! is the best surprise.

 It's a handsome-looking movie as well, overtly artificial looking at times but you can at least tell they were going for an aesthetic. As with Deadpool 2, I appreciate when expensive special effects scenes are used to sell goofy slapstick jokes like Pitt banging his head against random objects in an extended slow motion (and CGI-heavy) scene. 

There are also some genuine moments of cleverness buried in the script - even an extremely cutesy and tiresome schtick where Tyree Henry keeps classifying others as Thomas the Tank Engine characters makes for some surprisingly fun twists in the story, but only after it's been used as exasperatingly as possible. And as mentioned above I did like the final act. Movies that end well are easier to forgive, but all in all this was pretty damn disappointing.