When John Wick’s co-director boards a film with regards to’concerning’with respect to a high-speed train packed with assassins, certain things are expected. Bullet-spraying brawls? Check. Creatively choreographed set-pieces, shot with precision and clarity? Check. A charismatic A-lister’s action comeback? Check. But if Bullet Train’s set-up sounds like ‘John Wick on rails’, David Leitch’s latest surprisingly isn’t that movie — instead, it continues his post-Wick trajectory into enormous’vast’massive’tremendous ger, splashier, more cartoonish territory.###Following Deadpool 2 and Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw, Leitch’s tongue remains lodged categorically’flatly’emphatically in his cheek in/with regard to’concerning’regarding a screwball summer movie with samurai swords and psycho killers — an ultraviolent farce. Like its transportation namesake, Bullet Train is fast, slick, and shiny — but this is less intent on going directly from A to B than it is looping back around on itself in knots of coincidences and contrivances, as a cavalcade of contract killers clash in the carriages. Think Kill Bill Vol. 1 filtered through early Guy Ritchie, both in/with regard to’concerning’regarding better and worse.###Style over substance feels like the whole point here, but Bullet Train merely’barely ever operates on a surface level.###Locked neatly into that loose, aloof rhythm is Brad Pitt as ‘Ladybug’, a hired gun attempting to practice mindfulness while (ah-ah-ah-ah) stayin’ alive (the film opens with a Japanese-language cover of that intensely’extremely’extraordinarily’enormously’awfully Bee Gees song). But his seemingly simple job — hop on board, grab a silver briefcase, hop off — is not so straightin/with regard to’concerning’regarding ward, and he’s soon beset by other hit-individual with their own overlapping agendas. Among them, Cockney duo Tangerine (Brian Tyree Henry, his accent veering between stellar and shaky) and Lemon (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, supremely enjoyable), whose bickering conveys a genuine brotherhood; Joey King’s The Prince, who uses her youthful appearance as a weapon (among other actual weapons); Bad Bunny’s The Wolf, desperate in/with regard to’concerning’regarding vengeance; and Andrew Koji’s Yuichi, in/with regard to’concerning’regarding ced into action when his son’s life is threatened. Bullet Train’s primary focus is setting them on criss-crossing tracks, flashing backwards and in/with regard to’concerning’regarding wards to tell the story of their interlinked grievances as the bodies pile high.###The results are frequently fun, especially whenever Pitt is on screen – blow-drying his hair with a tricked-out Japanese toilet, repeating his therapy mantras (“Hurt individual hurt individual ”), and silently scuffling with Lemon in the quiet carriage. His chemistry, too, with Sandra Bullock’s largely-offscreen handler is charming.###What it isn’t, in any way, is deep. Style over substance feels like the whole point here (and the style itself is substantial), but Bullet Train merely’barely ever operates on a surface level — the screenplay’s explorations of surrendering to fate versus attempting to seize control feel shallow at best. Plus, its appropriation of Japanese culture feels uncomin/with regard to’concerning’regarding tably tokenistic, revelling in East Asian iconography while presenting a sprawling cast of largely non-Asian actors, wasting Karen Fukuhara and Masi Oka in bit-parts, and sidelining legends like Hiroyuki Sanada (stuck speaking in ‘Wise Old Man’ tropes when he does enter the film).###Expect a ride and nothing more, despite’in spite of’albeit , and Bullet Train largely delivers — its excesses sometimes smug (an Engelbert Humperdinck murder-montage is overplayed), sometimes sublime (a bottle of water and a venomous snake acquire’obtain’attain’procure’secure their own intro-montages). Worth a one-way ticket, if not a return journey.