Bullet Train: One helluva ride!

Bullet Train (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong bloody violence, gore, relentless profanity and brief sexuality

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

The first 10-15 minutes of this film are remarkably off-putting.

 

We’re dumped into the midst of a story in progress, with numerous characters muttering sotto voce dialogue that gets buried beneath a shrieking pop score soundtrack. A gory and unpalatable flashback illuminates a running argument between two posh assassins over whether they’ve thus far killed 16 or 17 people.

 

Ladybug (Brad Pitt, left) believes that he has made an easy score, when he quickly
locates the metal briefcase he's been hired to snatch. Then he encounters Wolf
(Benito A Martinez Ocasio), merely the first of numerous assassins on this
bullet train run from Tokyo to Kyoto.

Elsewhere, Brad Pitt wanders amid the cacophony of late-night Tokyo — bewildered but purposeful — following instructions from a cool, soothing female “handler” at the other end of his phone.

Honestly, you’ll be tempted to bail …

 

… but that would be a mistake.

 

Once this film settles into its groove — and, more importantly, once viewers embrace that groove — this stylish, gleefully violent romp is a lot of fun.

 

Due in great part to Pitt’s increasingly amusing “Who, me?” performance.

 

Director David Leitch’s heavily stylized, unapologetically brutal thriller is a mash-up of Guy Ritchie-style crime romps and bloodthirsty Japanese yakuza epics, replete with wrathful assassins who go by code names, and have various scores to settle. Pitt’s character — dubbed “Ladybug” for the purposes of this snatch-and-grab assignment — swans not-quite-helplessly through this increasingly lethal chaos: the ultimate (comparative) innocent in the wrong place at the wrong time.

 

He has been tasked with retrieving a certain metal briefcase on the Töhoku Shinkansen Hayate bullet train run between Tokyo and Kyoto. It should be simple: Find the briefcase, depart the train at its next stop, liaise with his unseen handler.

 

What poor Ladybug doesn’t know — what we also don’t know, and learn only in fits and starts, as he does — is that the case is in the possession of the useless, wayward son (Logan Lerman) of White Death (Michael Shannon), a reclusive and much-feared Russian kingpin within the international crime scene.

 

White Wolf’s son is being chaperoned by professional killers Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry). The former is a Savile dandy with slicked-back hair and a penchant for erudite, long-winded speeches; the latter has a guileless demeanor and an uncanny ability to “read” people honed from (I’m not making this up) a lifelong study of Thomas the Tank Engine.

 

Ah, but this is a very busy train. The passengers also include Kimura (Andrew Koji), an alcoholic, low-level Tokyo criminal who has hit rock-bottom after failing to stop the unknown culprit who shoved his young son off the roof of a tall building. With family honor at stake, Kimura has concocted a mad scheme that will put him face-to-face with his target.

 

Then there’s Wolf (Benito A Martinez Ocasio), a rage-fueled assassin with a score to settle against Ladybug; The Hornet (Zazie Beetz), a master of disguise with a lethal sting, who travels beneath the radar of every job she accepts; and Prince (Joey King), a seemingly angelic young woman whose sweet looks and tender voice conceal torturous tendencies.

 

Oh, and let’s not forget the boomslang, a highly dangerous snake stolen from the Tokyo Zoo, whose highly toxic venom causes victims to bleed out from every bodily orifice within 90 seconds.

 

And off we go…

Fury: Much too angry

Fury (2014) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for profanity and relentless battlefield violence and gore
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.17.14

Classic World War II movies, absent the cynicism and despair that later infected so many big-screen depictions of the Vietnam quagmire, laced their stories with honor, chivalry, moral fortitude and an absolute respect for the chain of command.

Frightened and badly out of his depth, Norman (Logan Lerman, left) can't imagine that he'd
be of any use to the Sherman tank team led by Wardaddy (Brad Pitt). But this battle-weary
sergeant knows how to inspire his men, even a callow newcomer like Norman, and soon
the kid is executing Nazi scum with the enthusiasm of a seasoned warrior.

The Nazi enemy may have behaved like vicious, amoral swine, but our stalwart boys worked together with courage and righteousness, guided by the innovative strategies of battlefield stalwarts whose ingenuity helped trump sometimes superior forces.

This classic archetype continued for decades thereafter, building to modern classics such as Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan and HBO’s lavish miniseries, Band of Brothers, both of which gained their power from a rich tapestry of characters about whom we cared very, very deeply.

It would appear that this cinematic model has fallen out of favor.

Writer/director David Ayer’s Fury presents the latter days of the European campaign as the equivalent of an inner-city street fight between drug gangs, with the grunts on our side no better than the animals wearing the Nazi cross. The so-called “good guys” in this unpalatable story seem modeled on the thugs who tortured and humiliated Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib; early on, in fact, we’re granted a sequence of American GIs behaving just that badly with a captured German soldier.

It’s interesting — carrying this observation even further — that this story’s sole act of genuine kindness, of benevolent altruism, is offered by one of those aforementioned Nazi monsters. We could call it dramatic irony, but I’m not willing to give Ayer that much credit.

Three of the five primary characters in this film are one-dimensional brutes granted only a hiccup of actual characterization: superficial affectations implied solely by nicknames such as Gordo, Bible and Coon-Ass.

(Just in passing, I’d love to declare a moratorium on movies with characters who never seem to have real names, but instead are granted stupid monikers better suited to comic book villains. It has become a tiresome and frankly irritating cliché.)

Our other two protagonists, while graced with a bit more presence and personality, aren’t that much more likable ... but we eventually bond with them, to a degree, solely because we’ve gotta care about somebody in this mean-spirited mess.

And “mean-spirited” is this film’s prevailing tone: no surprise, since Ayer is the enraged scripter of nihilistic cop dramas such as Training Day and End of Watch, and earlier this year wrote and directed the offensively deplorable Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle, Sabotage. Ayer clearly doesn’t think much of his fellow man, and a little of that contemptuous vitriol goes a long way.

Given this new film’s 134-minute length, that’s a very long way.

Percy Jackson, Sea of Monsters: Mythbegotten

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2013) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rating: PG, for fantasy action violence
By Derrick Bang

Conventional wisdom suggests the value of a winning formula.

Movie studies, infamous for getting things bass-ackwards, sometimes cling to a losing formula.

Having successfully invaded Polyphemus' lair and snatched the fabled Golden Fleece,
our young heroes — from left, Tyson (Douglas Smith), Clarisse (Levin Rambin), Grover
(Brandon T. Jackson), Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario) and Percy (Logan Lerman) —
discover that keeping their prize will be even more difficult.

2010’s Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief offered fabulous monsters, slick special effects and an A-list cast of cameo players ... and nothing else. The film was dumb, soulless and atrociously acted; the entire cast delivered every line with smirking condescension, as if mocking the material as a waste of time. Needless to say, if the actors don’t seem to believe in what they’re doing, we certainly won’t.

Critics dismissed the film with contempt, and it was justifiably loathed by fans of Rick Riordan’s teen-lit fantasy series; Craig Titley’s snarky script completely failed to respect the source novel. The biggest surprise? Chris Columbus occupied the director’s chair, and you’d certainly think that the guy who helmed the first two Harry Potter movies would understand how to bring fantasy to the big screen.

You’d think.

Despite earning only $89 million in the States — on a budget of $95, which qualifies as a failure — the results were far better worldwide, with a final tally of $226 million. Those numbers spell S-E-Q-U-E-L, despite everybody’s recognition that they were dealing with a dog.

And so now we’re graced with Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters ... which offers fabulous monsters and slick special effects, and is dumb, soulless and atrociously acted. Despite the presence of a new director (Thor Freudenthal) and scripter (Marc Guggenheim), little has changed. The young stars may be three years more mature, but their performances haven’t improved much. And it’s rather telling that the first film’s big names — Sean Bean, Pierce Brosnan, Uma Thurman, Steve Coogan, Rosario Dawson and Catherine Keener — opted out this time.

Indeed, we never catch the barest glimpse of the Olympian gods who played such an important role in the first film. Oh, they’re mentioned here, now and then, but that’s it. Instead of Zeus, Hades, Poseidon and Medusa, we get Hermes and Dionysus. Our favorite centaur, Chiron, now is played by Anthony Head (a fan favorite from the days of Buffy the Vampire Slayer), rather than Brosnan. Although I’ve no desire to slight the talents of the esteemed Mr. Head, whose work I admire, one gets the distinct impression that these filmmakers settled for the B Team.

Freudenthal deserves credit for attempting a more serious tone; he mostly eliminated the smug atmosphere that poisoned the first film. But Guggenheim’s script takes even more liberties with the second entry in Riordan’s book series, leaving us with an “adaptation” in name only. I’m sure Riordan's fans will be equally unhappy.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower: Enchanting coming-of-age drama

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) • View trailer
4.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for drug and alcohol use, sexual candor and brief violence
By Derrick Bang

Judging by the number of perceptive, achingly poignant high school misfit dramas produced over the years, being unpopular must’ve been a whole lot more popular than it seemed at the time.

After unknowingly devouring some marijuana-laced brownies, Charlie (Logan Lerman,
center) unintentionally becomes the hilarious star of his first party. But new friends
Sam (Emma Watson) and Patrick (Ezra Miller) ignore this opportunity to humiliate him,
instead taking care to ensure that Charlie survives the experience with his dignity
(mostly) intact.

Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, published in 1999, has sold more than a million copies and become something of a modern Catcher in the Rye (an earlier classic, perhaps not coincidentally, said to be a favorite of Chbosky’s young protagonist). Perks also has the distinction of being one of the top entries in the American Library Association’s list of most frequently challenged and banned books, in 2004 and from ’06 through ’09 (where it peaked, at No. 3) ... which, in my mind, merely proves that Chbosky did an excellent job.

Hollywood naturally came calling, but Chbosky held onto his baby, mindful of the many horror stories revolving around successful authors who had seen their popular works destroyed by other hands. Meanwhile, he nurtured his varied talents by scripting the 2005 film adaptation of Rent and creating, writing and producing the 2006-08 TV series Jericho. A decade earlier, he also wrote, directed and produced The Four Corners of Nowhere, a little-seen 1995 indie film which I suspect is about to be rescued from obscurity.

Point being, Chbosky earned the right to script and direct Perks, and has done a commendable job. His angst-ridden saga of emotional isolation is well cast, impeccably acted, sensitively directed and — no surprise here — impressively faithful to the book. The film will be embraced both by young readers who devoured the epistolary novel, and by older movie fans who remember seeing themselves in John Hughes’ equally insightful teen dramas of the late 1980s (Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club and others).

Perks is, in short, destined to become one of the defining teen dramas of the early 21st century.

The year is 1991, as the precocious but socially awkward Charlie (Logan Lerman) begins his first morning as a freshman at Pittsburgh’s Mill Grove High School. He arrives in quiet terror, already counting down the days until he can flee as a graduating senior.

He’s smart and perceptive, easily able to answer his English teacher’s introductory questions ... but only privately, in his opened notebook, rather than risking peer censure by raising his hand and branding himself a teacher’s pet. But the instructor, Mr. Anderson (Paul Rudd), notices; a tentative bond is formed.