The featured movie on It’s All Right There In The Title Theater this week is Bullet Train Explosion (available on Netflix), a film that is likely to attract a large international audience despite its recycled plot. This Japanese adaptation is based on the well-received 1975 Japanese thriller, Bullet Train, which revolves around a runaway train set to explode if its speed drops below 80 km/hour. The concept may ring a bell for those familiar with 90s cinema, as it served as the inspiration for the popular American film, Speed, where a bus had to maintain a minimum speed of 50 mph to avoid catastrophe. This raises the question of whether this innovative concept needs another adaptation or if director Shinji Higuchi (known for Shin Godzilla) can bring fresh ideas to the table.

The Overview: It is interesting to note that the Japanese train service Hayabusa granted permission for its name and trains to be featured in the film, lending it a sense of authenticity. However, this may lead viewers to suspect that the company and its employees will be portrayed in a favorable light. The distinctive teal-and-white-with-a-pink-stripe design of the trains is elevated to symbolize nobility and is captured in gleaming shots, reminiscent of how car companies are promoted in Marvel movies with strategically placed logos. In essence, if you are seeking to identify the villain behind the explosive threat, individuals associated with Hayabusa are likely to be innocent.

In particular, pay close attention to the reliable train conductor, Mr. Takaichi (played by Tsuyoshi Kusanagi), who is introduced while guiding a group of high school students on a tour before embarking on a high-speed journey to Tokyo. The film bombards viewers with subtitles providing minute details of the train’s route, speed, and schedule at a frenetic pace, challenging the audience’s reading speed. Despite the technical specifics, the situation swiftly escalates into a survivalist ordeal as over 300 passengers and railway staff become pawns in the diabolical plan of a criminal who has planted a bomb on the train set to detonate if the speed falls below 100 km/hour. To secure the release of the hostages, the perpetrator demands a ransom of 100 billion yen (equivalent to almost 700 million US dollars), to be crowdfunded from the Japanese public. Twisted, isn’t it?

Of course – of course! – the train population includes a colorful conglomeration of personalities: A politician (Machiko Ono) skirting an adultery scandal who sees an opportunity to score PR points, an influencer (Jun Kaname) who wrote a bestseller, a variety of wide-eyed schoolgirls, a couple of sk8r bois, an old-timer whose electrician expertise comes in handy, a mysteriously calm gent who, we soon find out, wears a medical mask because he’s public enemy no. 1 because his helicopter crashed into an elementary school (!), etc. Meanwhile, in the Habayusa command center, rail honchos, dispatchers and engineers powwow with haggard cops and greezy government reps to problem-solve as the train blows through stops and perilously switches tracks at 120 km/hr, and figure out how to work around the government’s unyielding policy that they don’t negotiate with terrorists, in order to save all those lives. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Note: Not to be confused with 2022’s Brad Pitt snarkfest Bullet Train. Otherwise, looking past its Predecessors Of The Exact Same Concept, you’ve got your Runaway Trains and Snowpiercers – and we haven’t stared so intently at a speedometer since Back to the Future.

Performance Worth Watching: It’s easy to admire Kusanagi as the glue holding the movie’s variety of physical, moral and psychological conundrums together. He’s charismatic, but begging for a more fully fleshed-out character – and a stronger screenplay.

Memorable Dialogue: It seems inevitable that a couple of the almost-forgivable butthead characters would see a dire situation as a chance to boost their profiles: “Let’s raise our synergy!” the influencer guy says as he tries to collaborate with the scandalized politician lady. 

Sex and Skin: Is there a bullet-train version of the mile-high club? Like the 300 km/hr club? I ask because there’s no sex in this movie.

Our Take: The problem with Bullet Train Explosion is as simple as the plot is convoluted: It’s too long. Bizarre for a highwire action saga, the movie never maintains a protracted sense of urgency. Individual moments reach sweaty-palmed peaks, and are keenly executed by Higuchi, who knows his way around an action sequence. But in between, it sags like the belly of an overburdened donkey. Its too many characters dilute the story’s emotional potency, and their interactions all blur together into a repetitive moosh of unconvincing, almost-cartoonish portrayals of approximate human drama, e.g., multiple eruptions into fistfights between various parties in disagreement. We get it. Tension runs high, tempers get hot. One, maybe two redfaced push-’n’-shoves would make the point, but a half-dozen? Overkill.

Most egregious is the reveal of the villain, which is a true eyeroller, and an excuse to indulge their convoluted backstory, which messily references the 1975 Bullet Train, so I guess Explosion is technically a sequel? It turns up some less-than-half-assed subtext about abusive relationships to go with an indictment of bureaucracy that finds the people in charge of the country making stubborn, logic-defying decisions (also taking Shin Godzilla into account, the Japanese government doesn’t get much love from Higuchi). Nearly everything is broadly rendered, especially the portrayal of Hayabusa employees – the driver, the snack-cart lady and the conductor’s greenhorn assistant show a selfless dedication to public service, teamwork and wholesome goodness, as inspired by the noble conductor himself. The humble types persevere under pressure while the arrogant, entitled types reveal themselves as turds (or are just lame comic relief), which, hooray for that, but next time, let’s tell this familiar story with a little more succinctness. 

Our Call: Or maybe come up with a fresh premise? Just a thought. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.