| Columbia Pictures | Release Date: August 5, 2022 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
20
Mixed:
32
Negative:
9
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Critic Reviews
Aug 23, 2022
Aug 3, 2022
When Bullet Train sings it’s often a blackly hilarious and knowingly absurd slice of demented action goodness. When it doesn’t work, self-indulgence begins to creep in, almost as if the creative team deliberately set out to make something that would be fondly remembered as a cult favorite in the years to come, but that’s a sentiment that can only be earned, not cultivated.
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NMEAug 3, 2022
The film runs out of rail a long time before it stops moving. On the other hand, it’s almost impossible not to enjoy every moment that Pitt is on screen. Stealing the film with whatever he’s given (a water bottle, a bucket hat, an automatic toilet…), he’s clearly having a great time. It’s lucky for us that at least some of it rubs off.
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Aug 2, 2022
Ending up in a CG mess that tries to say something about karma, Bullet Train isn’t the Pulp Fiction on rails it thinks it is. What it is, though, is a whole dollop of fun. Buoyed by Leitch’s expert eye for action as well as one of the most hilariously disposable A-list casts around, the film has Friday night written all over it.
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SlashfilmAug 2, 2022
Considering the majority of modern mainstream fare, we can look at "Bullet Train" as a mild win, a presumably high-budgeted action film that boasts no superheroes, no extended universes, nothing like that. But though this film clears that low bar, Bullet Train is only ever mildly fun, while reminding you of movies that are often a whole lot better.
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Aug 5, 2022
Leitch’s emphasis on excessive and nearly nonstop stunt-filled action is hardly surprising. His lack of directorial discipline, however, is. The guy apparently couldn’t help himself, piling on the action beats until they become numbing. By the end, you’re more than ready to get off this Bullet Train, feeling drained and disheartened.
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Aug 4, 2022
It’s a mess of a plot and a literal trainwreck of a denouement. No faulting the destruction scenes, since they’re in Leitch’s wheelhouse, and as they say, every dollar is on the screen in that regard. But to paraphrase a quote from the late character actor Edmund Gwenn, killing is easy, comedy is hard.
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Aug 2, 2022
Bullet Train certainly moves at an appropriately brisk pace, with Brad Pitt heading a sprawling cast. But the breakneck action is offset by a smart-alecky tone that proves both uneven and occasionally too cute for its own good, along with a mashup of styles – from the music to the visuals – that comes across like a Quentin Tarantino wannabe, with a dash of “Deadpool” for good measure.
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Aug 2, 2022
Bullet Train has no shortage of giddy, madcap gusto, hoping to satiate hardcore genre fans with its bloody, over-the-top violence and rising body count. But this lumbering locomotive proves to be neither hilariously amoral nor liberatingly violent — it makes quite a commotion, but mostly just spins its wheels.
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Sep 3, 2022
Sure, the characters fight a lot (it is an action movie directed by a stunt guy, after all), and the fight work is consistently above average and sporadically funny, but they spend so much time talking about why they’re fighting, and whether they should fight that Bullet Train often times feels more like a yak-fest than an action movie
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Aug 2, 2022
There’s a universe where Bullet Train works — lean harder into the gaudy, neon-pop anime aesthetic, ditch the too-clever character work, and add some honest-to-God jokes into the mix. Unfortunately, as it stands, Bullet Train feels like a lost spec script from the mid-2000s, given a fresh new coat of paint and a few script reworks by some Reddit teens.
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The Observer (UK)Aug 7, 2022
There are films that are so thunderously stupid they bypass guilty-pleasure status and end up as a danger to themselves and all around them. Bullet Train falls into the latter camp. It’s so imbecilic, you wouldn’t trust it to cross the road unsupervised, let alone negotiate Japan’s Shinkansen high-speed rail network.
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Aug 3, 2022
What’s missing is a bit of heart to make you care, or at least, a sense of knowing how to wrap it up quickly enough, and smartly enough, for it not to matter if you don’t. An amped-up Friday night audience might have fun with Bullet Train once, but it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to ride it again.
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The IndependentAug 3, 2022
Pitt’s funny here – there’s a precise comic timing to the way he shoves a venomous snake down a toilet bowl – but Bullet Train feels so try-hard in its quirky theatrics that it’s a little like watching a kid repeatedly calling for their mother’s attention before they cartwheel into a brick wall.
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