7 minute read
OFF THE RAILS
from Inlander 08/04/2022
by The Inlander
REVIEW
BRAD PITT GOES off the RAILS
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You’ll wish you could get off Bullet Train at the first stop
BY CHASE HUTCHINSON
An ostensible action film that is so light on wellcrafted fights one hesitates to even classify it as such, Bullet Train can best be described as a low-rent Quentin Tarantino imitation though without anything of its own to stand on. The film is oddly grating and increasingly one note to the point of being obnoxious. Most egregiously, it just isn’t all that fun. What little joy there is to be had with some of the committed cast soon fades into the background when buried under a mountain of superficial schtick. It succeeds only at being the summer’s biggest missed opportunity.
Based on the 2010 novel Maria Beetle by mystery writer Kōtarō Isaka with a screenplay by Fear Street 1978 co-writer Zak Olkewicz, the story centers on a former assassin named Ladybug who is trying to reform himself. He is buffoonish man with a bucket hat besought by either good or bad luck, depending on how you look at it. Played by Brad Pitt in rare, though not necessarily good, form as he coasts on making the same version of a joke about self-help ad nauseum. When Ladybug gets drawn in for what may be one last job that requires him to steal a briefcase from a high-speed train, he’ll soon discover that he is essentially trapped in the confines of the cars with a quirky cast of killers.
There is the duo of Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Tangerine and Brian Tyree Henry’s Lemon who spend most of their time bickering about how to handle their own mission. Then there is Joey King as Prince, a manipulative young girl with her own mysterious agenda, and Bad Bunny as Wolf, a heartbroken hitman out for revenge. They aren’t the only ones as there are plenty of unexpected appearances from familiar faces who leap into the fray. Some are mere cameos, inserted for lackluster throwaway jokes, while others become more central to the experience.
Directed by David Leitch, a veteran stunt coordinator whose work on the original John Wick and 2017’s Atomic Blonde would lead one to believe this new film could pack similarly kinetic action. Not only does it not rise to that level, it seems to actively undercut and even downplay the action elements. Whenever a fight sequence will get going, the film will either dilute it with another so-so joke or sometimes just cut away entirely. Each battle becomes more about hollow slapstick than well-crafted stunts, failing to craft any memorable moments. If you were looking for the ballet of brutality of John Wick or anything resembling the stunning one-take stairway fight of Atomic Blonde, you best look elsewhere.
The actors are the only saving graces, some of whom manage to keep things moving despite the shoddy story they’ve been saddled with. Henry in particular could read a phonebook and still be a magnetic screen pres-
ence. Most known for his role in the hit show Atlanta, he is both comedic and heartfelt even when the rest of the film is not. Unfortunately, the cast’s talents are often left underutilized. Most bafflingly, there is the blink-and-youmiss-it presence of Karen Fukuhara (The Boys), who never gets anything to do despite her dynamic screen presence in past projects. By the time the story coalesces and we learn that this ensemble cast of characters have more in common than they realize, the revelation lands with a thud. Even with some flashes of flair, the Bullet Train experience is BULLET TRAIN surprisingly tame, never Rated R embracing the possibility Directed by David Leitch of its premise or setting. Starring Brad Pitt, Sandra Bullock, Joey King There are good films that show how to make use of the confined space of a train to their advantage like Train to Busan or Snowpiercer. Those films felt bold whereas this just goes through the motions on its belabored and far too long journey to nowhere. Even with all the potential to really go wild, Bullet Train ends up being a mishmash of superior movies that never offers anything remotely exciting of its own. n ALSO OPENING EASTER SUNDAY Based loosely on star Jo Koy’s own experiences, this family comedy finds the stand-up comedian sussing humor out of the quirks and tensions that exist in FilipinoAmerican families in order to generate laughs and heartwarming connections. Rated PG-13
Hallelujah mixes a single-song deep dive and a standard music doc .
The Song Remains the Same
Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song charts the evolution of an omnipresent hit
BY JOSH BELL
Even if you’ve never heard of Leonard Cohen, you’ve almost certainly heard his song “Hallelujah.” Maybe you’ve heard a single, cringe-inducing montage, and allowing major artists like Eric Church, Regina Spektor and Amanda Palmer only brief snippets of comthe version by Jeff Buckley, or John Cale, or Rufus Wainwright, or a contestant on a TV singing competition. Maybe you don’t even realize that you’ve heard it, because it was playing at the grocery store or in a movie or TV show. It’s one of those songs that’s become so ubiquitous that it’s transitioned into background noise.
Filmmakers Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine aim to unpack that phenomenon in their documentary Hallelujah: Leonard HALLELUJAH: LEONARD Cohen, a Journey, a Song, inspired by the COHEN, A JOURNEY, A SONG book by Alan Light. They’re only partially Rated PG-13 successful, though, delivering a sometimes Directed by Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine awkward mix of biography and cultural At the Magic Lantern anthropology. The movie opens with the late Cohen performing “Hallelujah” at his final concert in 2013, and spends the next hour or so giving a summary of Cohen’s life and career, leading up to the release of the original version of “Hallelujah” on his 1984 album Various Positions.
Cohen, who was a successful poet before becoming a singer-songwriter, had a fascinating and varied career, but there’s nothing particularly compelling about the way that Geller and Goldfine lay out those details, employing standard talking heads and archival footage. By the time Hallelujah gets to the recording of “Hallelujah,” it’s easy to forget that this isn’t just meant to be a straightforward Cohen career-overview piece. That makes it a bit jarring when the movie suddenly shifts focus to the life of Jeff Buckley, before veering back to Cohen. Once Geller and Goldfine start digging into the particulars of how “Hallelujah” metamorphosed from a deep cut on a failed Cohen album (which was initially rejected by his U.S. record company) into a cultural touchstone, Hallelujah asserts a more distinctive cinematic identity. The filmmakers trace every step of the song’s evolution, starting with Cohen’s lengthy composition process, which stretched over a period of years and included, according to one interviewee, more than 150 potential verses. Cohen himself reworked the song in live versions after the studio recording was essentially buried, and Bob Dylan was the first of many artists to take it up as a favorite Cohen tune to cover. The song’s later, higher-profile evolution includes Buckley, the Shrek soundtrack, many questionable auditions from shows like American Idol, and eventual pop-culture saturation. Hallelujah doesn’t give all of these unlikely developments their full due, glossing over the reality shows in mentary. After a relatively short but illuminating detour, Hallelujah returns to Cohen, highlighting his late-life resurgence in popularity that owed quite a bit to the rise of “Hallelujah.” There are a lot of valuable insights in Hallelujah, about the sometimes arbitrary ways that art can find its way into the popular consciousness and about how songs can take on different meanings when interpreted by different artists. Anyone whose primary experience of “Hallelujah” is as a now-clichéd bit of shorthand for mournful regret will likely gain a new appreciation for the deep, personal soulsearching that Cohen put into its composition. The problem is that those insights take up only about a third of the two-hour movie, which is otherwise a perfectly serviceable musical biography about a landmark singer-songwriter. Cohen was far more than just the man behind “Hallelujah,” and the movie provides a good jumping-off point for exploring his other work. That’s what any decent music documentary ought to do, though, and in its best moments Hallelujah is much more expansive than that. It reaches for grand statements, but pulls back into the mundane. n
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