by Nathaniel R
Whenever we're about to go thumbs down on two movies, we feel the need to reiterate that we genuinely love the cinema. Even when we don't love a movie, we're (usually) glad we went. But sometimes you want to love a movie (Thirteen Lives), and it just isn't worthy. Other times you go in, fully expecting a great love (Bullet Train) but the movie is too narcissistic and cocksure to even notice you're watching it in time to love you back...
BULLET TRAIN (David Leitch)
Now in theaters
Brad Pitt as "Ladybug"
Brad Pitt is one of our all time great movie stars. He's been a joy to watch since his breakthrough in 1991 (Thelma & Louise) and still is 31 years later. One of the most enjoyable things about long and prolific careers, from this cinephile's perspective, is watching them as if they're their own longform movie. Long opportunity-filled careers usually beginning, middle, and final acts with subplots and intermissions along the way. For the first decade of Pitt's golden career Robert Redford was the matinee idol he was constantly compared to. As he came into his own remarkable peak he was famous enough to just be Brad Pitt, a pinch of sideways energy and existential quandary livening up the Traditional Leading Man performances. Now as his interest in acting seems to be waning, he's moved into a kind of jeff Bridges Lebowski and beyond phase. You can see this new phase coming as far back as Moneyball (2011) but it wasn't foregrounded until his Oscar winning role as the cocky amiable stuntman in Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019). Now it's all chill confidence (as a performer) and laidback comic rhythms (for the characters) all the time. In Bullet Train. as in his brief role in The Lost City (2022) he plays a trained killer who you sense would definitely rather exchange 'namastes' than death blows.
His handle in the new film is "Ladybug" which tells you a lot about what you need to know about Bullet Train. It's funny, silly, star-driven, and even eccentric albeit the latter in an extremely digestable mainstream way, Everyone we meet will be a bold strokes "character" with a name to match but not a person. Even the characters without a handle, will not have the benefit of actual names but be called things like The Elder and The Son. The performances vary in quality with Brian Tyree Henry and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the easy standouts and Michael Shannon as the nadir and surprisingly terrible as "White Death". But, importantly, everyone looks like they're having fun. But is the audience? Sometimes... but it's all a bit exhausting.
Brian Tyree Henry as "Lemon" and Aaron Taylor Johnson as "Tangerine"
When is glib too glib? The answer will surely vary from person to person but Bullet Train was too glib by half for me. It's also as fast as its title though speed can ironically become sluggish if there's too much of it. There's almost never a beat to catch your breath and care. The movie it most called to mind though it's infinitely superior to it, is Suicide Squad (2016). Like that ugly franchise launcher it feels at all times more like a trailer than a real movie, clip after clip, setpiece after setpiece, many of them flashy character intros. And the violence... If we're meant to take the violence as cartoonish theatrics, a la Wile E Coyote -- and I think we are given the outrageous comedy involved -- why do we have to dwell on the gory details, like stabbings, gushing blood, beheadings, and maimings?. Bullet Train has its moments -- Leitch's action bonafides are still definitely on display -- but it's sadly a step down after the remarkable Atomic Blonde (2017). B-/C+
THIRTEEN LIVES (Ron Howard)
Streaming on Amazon Prime.
If you have already seen the acclaimed documentary The Rescue (2021) which opened in theaters just 10 months ago and is now streaming on Disney+, you can safely skip this live-action version. It's the international true story of 12 boys and their coach who became trapped when a cave flooded just before monsoon season in Thailand and how people from all over the world showed up to help. Though the true story is still filled with tense life-or-death situations and nail-biting decision making, Howard's feature version is strangely lacking in personality. This is not to imply that Howard is a director who brings in a lot of personality from behind the camera (he has never been that) but rather that the movie is curiously lacking in personality when the real life characters being portrayed had a good deal of it! Colin Farrell, Viggo Mortensen, and their supporting castmembers -- all very capable actors -- sell the dramatic beats but the tonal register is so earnest and in-the-moment that you lose the eccentricity of the real men they exhibited while reliving their experience in the documentary. Howard and team are further hampered by not having the rights to the life stories of the Thai characters which makes this feel like a white savior narrative though it is, in fact, a true story and the white divers did actually save the Thai team. Graphic animation of which chamber we're inside of and how far they all are from each other feels like an unecessary throwback to the doc, which kept better track of the scope of the mission and the geography. This is the danger of doing a feature so close on the heels of a successful doc. You never want to be The Walk (2015) to a Man on Wire (2008), you know? And in this case the superior doc hasn't even reached its first birthday yet! C/C-