Amber Midthunder in 'Prey.'

Brad Pitt in 'Bullet Train.' 

Brad Pitt in 'Bullet Train.' 

It typically takes somewhere between two and three hours to get from Tokyo to Kyoto by bullet train. But for the ensemble traveling to and from the cities in David Leitch’s (2014’s John Wick, 2017’s Atomic Blonde) new action thriller named after that nifty mode of transportation, the journey is erroneously stretched overnight, and made extra inconvenient because everybody — or at least everybody on whom screenwriter Zak Olkewicz puts his attention aboard this unusually vacant locomotive — is an assassin interested for varying reasons in a silver briefcase tucked away in the luggage section secretly fat with $10 million. 

The assassins are played by Brad Pitt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Joey King, Zazie Beetz, Andrew Koji, Hiroyuki Sanada, and Puerto Rico’s musical superstar du jour Bad Bunny. Because why not end the starriness or puzzling dominance of Westerners in this adaptation of a Japanese novel by Kōtarō Isaka, there also are cameos from Channing Tatum, Sandra Bullock, Michael Shannon, and, in what practically amounts to a horror-movie jump scare, Ryan Reynolds. Almost every character is unwittingly fighting to see who can also be the most insufferable. Olkewicz, who conspicuously yearns to be a successor to Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie, writes everyone as quip machines whose off button broke. They’re differentiated with flashy Reservoir Dogs (1992)-esque code names (like Ladybug, Tangerine, Lemon, and so on) and even flashier outfits that seem meant to stand in for character depth, from King’s all-pink yassified Veruca Salt look — complete with a gun wrapped in a cherry-beaded hair-tie — to Pitt’s librarian-like black frames and casual bucket hat atop stringy Iggy Pop hair.

The 128-minute-long Bullet Train, which might have worked better as an 85-minute B-movie exercise, is mostly just lead-character Pitt exchanging straining-to-be-witty dialogues with the other characters that usually continue, gratingly, during the subsequent competently choreographed fights. Sometimes this routine is interrupted with flashbacks; they’re less effective engines for character development than additional evidence that Leitch has revisited Kill Bill (2003-’04) a lot over the years. You see that two-parter’s influence elsewhere: the stylized Orientalism, fast-moving cameras, winkingly anachronistic music choices (a lot of them vintage American ‘70s FM classics sung in Japanese), dialogue so dressed-up it almost feels sing-song.

But neither Olkewicz or Leitch has caught on that what holds the Kill Bill movies together are their true emotional stakes, performances from actors that convince you they could rip apart a phonebook with their teeth if given a good-enough reason to. Bullet Train attempts somewhat to have pathos: there are a few revenge plots embedded in this distraction-prone narrative. But they’re only decorative. And most of the performances have the shrugged quality of an actor doing about a day’s work on set so they can buy the beachside vacation home they’ve been eyeing. They’re further beleaguered by how many Americans are doing British accents that put you at the edge of your seat waiting for a “guvnah” or bemused “blimey” to sprinkle a conversation. (At least King pronounces “schedule” correctly.) 

There’s also the problem of Olkewicz having a pinky nail’s worth of Tarantino’s wit — there’s one recurring Thomas the Tank Engine bit that feels like the verbal equivalent of a pestering gnat, and a trio of gay jokes further throwing things back to the early aughts — and Leitch’s capability behind the camera never translating into originality. Bullet Train is like a Coca-Cola commercial paying tribute to Tarantino’s brand; it’s exhaustingly derivative. It ends with a crash; unluckily for everyone involved with this movie that isn’t just literally true. 

Amber Midthunder in 'Prey.'

I WATCHED PREY (Hulu) after getting home from Bullet Train; it almost instantly soothed the bad mood the eager-to-impress Bullet Train left me in. This action movie, which acts as the fifth installment (it’s a prequel) in the decades-running — and long-ailing — Predator franchise, doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel. But it’s very effective at what it is. Which, like the great first movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger, is a tightly wound slasher action movie hybrid whose sense of suspense only escalates, and which astutely uses its villain as a figure bringing into starker relief the brutalities of military interventionism (as it was in the original) and colonialism (the new movie).

Prey is set in the early 1700s, on a sprawl of Comanche territory, and follows a young woman named Naru (Amber Midthunder) as she and an ever-dwindling number of her tribe face against the title character — a freakishly skilled alien hunter who’s come to Earth with a mission never clearly understood beyond wanting to kill everyone who ever comes in their line of sight. The expressive and physically spry Midthunder is excellent as a resolute warrior who, before the creature dropped in, had only ever been underestimated in her interest in hunting; director Dan Trachtenberg constructs dynamic action sequences that benefit, like the original, from their careful use of the natural landscape both as a backdrop and a weapon that can be used to one’s advantage. The Predator franchise wasn’t in dire need of a revival, but Prey makes a good enough case that it was worth revisiting.

Movie Love is 425's weekly film column. For more movie recommendations from Blake Peterson, subscribe to his newsletter.

Blake Peterson is 425's digital coordinator.

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