David Leitch (ATOMIC BLONDE, DEADPOOL 2)’s Guy Ritchie-esque film version of Kotaro Isaka’s novel of mercs & assassins riding the Shinkansen is a perfectly diverting time at the cinema, though a bit slow-going at the outset. Having thought the trailer, which covers Brad Pitt‘s bad-luck assassin who doesn’t want to kill anymore taking a mission to hop on a train outta Tokyo and snatch a silver suitcase, looked like a lot of fun I wasn’t prepared for quite so much setup; the film opens with Andrew Koji‘s Yuichi Kimura hovering over his son’s hospital bed, then taking off in search of revenge on whoever pushed him off a roof. The culprit is the Prince (Joey King), a vicious master manipulator hiding behind an oh-so-innocent-girl act, who wants to use Yuichi against a terrifying Russian criminal who swooped into Japan and seized the Yakuza. Also aboard the train: the double-act of Tangerine & Lemon (Aaron Taylor-Johnson & Brian Tyree Henry), whose banter makes them probably the most fun characters to spend time with aboard the train. The action’s damn good (Leitch co-directed the first JOHN WICK, and the tremendous dragged-out staircase fight in ATOMIC BLONDE is one of THE points in its favor) and Pitt’s character’s loopy reluctant fighter/fortune cookie aphorisms schtick is charming enough, but the characters with the real stakes are never really presented as compelling, and past a certain point the film seems to be working a bit too conspicuously hard to center so many non-Japanese in a flick set in Japan. Entertaining enough, but maybe wait ’til it’s streaming somewhere? (More polished and fun, to be sure, than similar stuff made FOR streaming; I’d say it’s more worth your time than, oh, Netflix’s Gosling-Evans face-off THE GRAY MAN.)
