Brad Pitt might be one of our biggest and most enduring movie stars, but 30-odd years into his fame it’s just possible that he doesn’t get enough credit for the detail – and most importantly, sense of humor – that he brings to his roles.
From his star-making breakout in Thelma & Louise onwards, he’s made a pretty good fist of parodying the ideal leading man, using his dreamy looks as a slippery weapon – think back to his camp, whiny immortal in Interview with the Vampire; his personal trainer harebrained him in Burn After Reading; or his leathery, laconic stunt guy in Once Upon A Time in… Hollywood. (Serious Brad is never nearly as good; he’s a character actor trapped in a leading man mould.)
At 58, Pitt is in the autumn of his blissful idiocy, and it’s a blessing – even if the movies aren’t always a match for his gifts. After stealing the fun but clunky The Lost City – in what amounted to an extended cameo, playing an absurdly macho CIA operative – he’s back to headline David Leitch’s new action movie Bullet Train, and he just might be the only thing keeping this frantic but feeble ride on the tracks.
Looking perfectly ridiculous – and somehow impossibly cool – in a bucket hat and dopey glasses, Pitt plays an unlucky hit man codenamed Ladybug, who finds himself in Tokyo, strutting to a Japanese pop cover of Stayin’ Alive and bound for the bullet train at the behavior of his unseen handler who doubles as his part-time therapist (Sandra Bullock, quite literally phoning it in).
A reformed thug of sorts, Ladybug has recently emerged from some kind of zen retreat that has him spouting goofy self-help mantras – “You put peace out in the world, you get peace back” – that play right into Pitt’s specialty of fusing the silly with the sublime.
On board the train, Ladybug has to snatch a suitcase full of cash from a pair of assassins straight out of a Guy Ritchie movie – Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, sporting a douchey mustache and doing his best Ray Winstone) and Lemon (Brian Tyree) Henry, having fun with all the silly accents he must have absorbed on the last, London-set season of Atlanta).
There’s also a deranged assassin cosplaying as a schoolgirl (Joey King), a flamboyant hit man known as The Wolf (pop superstar Bad Bunny), and the shadowy, shapeshifting killer Hornet (Zazie Beetz).