‘Bullet Train’ Review: Brad Pitt Leads This Gleefully Overloaded, High-Speed Battle Royale

variety.com:

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticThe bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto takes about two hours and 15 minutes — just the right amount of time to pull off a cartoonishly over-the-top action movie, in which half a dozen assassins shoot, stab and otherwise perforate each other’s pretty little faces in pursuit of a briefcase stuffed with cash.

It’s a high-stakes game of hot potato, choreographed and executed by “Atomic Blonde” director David Leitch, in which a self-deprecating Brat Pitt wears a bucket hat and oversized specs, Bryan Tyree Henry and Aaron Taylor-Johnson play bickering “twin” hitmen Lemon and Tangerine, and “The Princess” wedding crasher Joey King (known here as “the Prince”) is a cunning killer who can fake-cry on command.

These characters — and half a dozen other lethal so-and-sos, with names like “the Hornet” (Zazie Beetz) and “the Wolf” (Benito A Martínez Ocasio, aka “Bad Bunny”) — are identified by giant on-screen labels superimposed over their flash-frozen mugs, the way Martin Scorsese or Guy Ritchie like to intro their ensembles. “Bullet Train” feels like it comes from the same brain as “Snatch,” wearing its pop style on its sleeve — a “Kill Bill”-level mix of martial arts, manga and gabby hitman movie influences.Adapting the pulp Kotaro Isaka novel “MariaBeetle,” Leitch and screenwriter Zak Olkewicz make each of these characters twice as eccentric as necessary, lest audiences’ attention wane for an instant.