Bullet Train is a very slick film that fell out of the Tarantino 90s Clone tree and hit all the branches on the way down. It thinks its the most clever thing to quip and all I could think of was a line in another Brad Pitt movie: “How’s that working out for you?”

So this flick takes place on a bullet train between Tokyo and Kyoto. It’s full of international assassins, Yakuza, dirt-bags, and con-men. They are each up to their own unique style of no good, all their stories intersecting in various clever ways around a brief case full of money.

Hey, it’s got a good cast with Brad Pitt just having a goof. Of all the clever clever people in the flick, he was the only one that worked for me because he felt natural. A casual dude embroiled in a lot of murder but really just trying to be more Zen. Everyone else is in a different film where they are either reciting warmed over Tarantino pop culture dialog or lines from a samurai or yakuza film.

The movie would occasionally kick into gear for me only to sputter with its own entitled sense of quirkiness and/or hyper violence. It all felt staged and planned, not nearly as anarchic as its trying to be. Not nearly as clever and probably 50% too proud of its twisty plot and random asides.

But there was something occasionally that would work for me. Enough for me to give it a marginal recommendation. There’s fun to be had and, frankly, there’s enough people who seem to like it that I guess it must work for them with much less reservation.

Score: 75