It’s a crying shame that Bullet Train Explosion — the new Japanese action movie on Netflix — doesn’t end with a Simi Garewal stand-in leading a choir of children into song. It’s the only minor addition that would’ve made an already enjoyable movie even better. Bullet Train Explosion is so closely linked to The Burning Train that if Vinod Khanna were to show up in his fireproof suit, you wouldn’t bat an eyelid. But it’s actually a legacy-quel to the 1975 Sonny Chiba vehicle Bullet Train, which was ripped off by not only BR Chopra, but also Jan de Bont, who directed the smash hit Keanu Reeves-starrer Speed.
Glossy, fast-paced, and directed with a no-nonsense attitude that is reflected in its characters, Bullet Train Explosion pays tribute to the disaster movies of the 1970s and 1990s. The film is piloted by the experienced visual effects whiz Shinji Higuchi, whose past work includes two Attack on Titan hits and Shin Godzilla. Unlike most major Hollywood movies these days, and virtually every Hindi film that punches above its weight — we’re looking at you, Sky Force — you can’t really tell the difference between practical and visual effects in Bullet Train Explosion. They likely used miniatures as well, but it’s all rather seamlessly done.
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The drama unfolds across several geographical locations, and features an ensemble so vast that your ability to keep track of who’s who is challenged on a minute-by-minute basis. We have the virtuous conductor Takaichi, who leads by example aboard the Shinkansen when a mysterious bomber calls in, and reveals that they have rigged the locomotive to explode if it slows down to below 100 mph. The bomber demands 100 billion yen, crowd-funded by the people of Japan to save their own. The passengers are a mix of everyday working class, along with a mid-level politician, an influencer, and a bunch of teenage schoolkids. Higuchi cuts back and forth between the action on the train, and the tense drama unfolding in the control room, where a large group of men clash (and eventually collaborate) over how to handle the situation.
There’s something about race-against-time thrillers set on trains. But it’s a dying breed of cinema. Last year’s Kill didn’t do much to move the needle; in an effort to make a violent movie, they forgot to make a good one. Barring the Korean crossover hit Train to Busan, the genre seemed to have died with the late, great Tony Scott, who went out with the back-to-back meathead masterpieces The Taking of Pelham 123 and Unstoppable. Only one of those movies had an actual villain, while in the other, Unstoppable, the train itself was the antagonist. Bullet Train Explosion is a combination of the two.
There is a villain, but we don’t actually meet them until the third act. Until then, the movie focuses on the rescue operation. In that regard, Bullet Train Explosion is a lot like United 93 — a movie about regular people getting the job done. Higuchi supplements the larger narrative with sequences that have their own mini-arcs. The earliest set-piece revolves around the train’s automatic braking system, which is designed to turn on when the locomotive nears a station. The driver is instructed to turn the automatic braking system off, but because a manoeuvre like this has never been attempted before, nobody in the control room knows if the plan will actually work. Will the manual override fail? Will the train blow up?
Of course it wont; a full two hours of run-time remains — Tokyo, the final destination, is over 600 kms away. But that doesn’t stop you from leaning in along with the rest of the control room. It’s an early indicator of how capably Bullet Train Explosion has been crafted. An even more thrilling set-piece around the half-way mark involves a second train being linked up with the main one, a gangway being erected between them, allowing passengers to be ferried from one to the other. By the time the villain is introduced in the flesh, you’d have likely forgotten about them amid all the derring-do being displayed by the Japanese working class.
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The villain’s motivations might seem incredible, but they reframe what was a rather universal action movie into a singularly Japanese story. Ideas of honour and shame are brought up, as is generational trauma and loneliness. The final act turns into a morality play that might remind you of The Dark Knight — it is revealed that the villain never expected their demands to be met, such is their lack of faith in Japanese society. Wafer-thin as the character is, the villain represents the utter hopelessness that we hear has become an epidemic in Japan. All of this adds an unexpected heft to a movie that dares to switch tracks even though it didn’t really need to.
Bullet Train Explosion
Director – Shinji Higuchi
Cast – Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, Kanata Hosoda, Non, Takumi Saitoh, Machiko Ono, Jun Kaname
Rating – 4/5
