By all metrics of linguistic audacity, Bullet Train Explosion may be in the running for the most exhilaratingly on-the-nose movie title in recent memory. It evokes a certain nostalgic bravado; equal parts B-movie bravura and blockbuster bombast. But does the film, a remake of the 1975 Japanese thriller The Bullet Train, deliver more than pyrotechnics? In the hands of director Shinji Higuchi, the answer is a resounding yes.
The premise is disarmingly familiar, and therein lies its genius: a Japanese bullet train receives a cryptic call; there’s a bomb onboard, and if the train dips below 100 kilometers per hour, it detonates. The comparison to Speed, the 1995 Keanu Reeves–Sandra Bullock vehicle in which a Los Angeles city bus faces a similar fate, is inevitable. But where Speed careened through traffic-snarled streets, Bullet Train Explosion propels its narrative along a sleek, high-velocity railway through Japan’s meticulously ordered infrastructure. The claustrophobia is palpable and the velocity is unforgiving.
Yet Higuchi doesn’t rest on tension alone. While the film might have coasted on set pieces and physics-defying stunts, it chooses instead to accelerate into deeper emotional terrain. At its core, Bullet Train Explosion is less a tale of heroes and villains than one of collective endurance. There is no brooding antihero in aviator shades. Instead, we find a train conductor, Kazuya Takaichi (Tsuyoshi Kusanagi), who becomes a sort of moral metronome for the film’s beating heart. His heroism is procedural, even bureaucratic, rooted in competence and calm rather than a Commando Arnold Schwarzenegger like charisma.
The passengers, too, resist stereotype. Among them: a scandal-tinged politician played with brittle elegance by Machiko Ono, a self-involved YouTube influencer (Jun Kaname) whose arc balances parody, and a humorous group of teenage students who serve as a mirror to both the chaos and grace of collective human response. Here, everyone has something at stake; and not merely their lives, but their dignity, their roles in society, their capacity to contribute under pressure.
Where the original Bullet Train painted its plot with broader thriller strokes, Higuchi’s update is more intricate, and arguably more attuned to the digital rhythms of the present day. The anonymous caller demands 100 billion yen; approximately $710 million, to be raised by the general public, a demand that weaponizes the frenetic reach of social media, turning the ransom into a referendum on public empathy. This is terror by GoFundMe, a heist reimagined as a viral campaign, something that is very relevant today.
WATCH BULLET TRAIN EXPLOSION ON NETFLIX
What’s striking is how Higuchi lets the action breathe, refusing the frenetic cuts of American genre fare in favor of a tempo that respects process: mechanics at work, authorities coordinating responses, even bystanders collaborating to aid the greater good. It’s the rare action film where the most gripping scenes may involve someone reading a manual or tracing an electric circuit with studied calm. In this way, the film mirrors something of Japanese society itself; methodical, collective, precise.
It’s tempting to imagine how Hollywood might have handled the material. Likely with more explosions and fewer ethics. But Bullet Train Explosion takes a different track. It’s what the MCU movies might have looked like if the Avengers fought Thanos or any of the other villains not alone, but with the help of an optimistic civilian leader and the support of the human population, all working together not out of necessity, but out of principle. It’s something the MCU missed out on but that Bullet Train Explosion capitalized with.
Even its title, so initially grandiose, becomes something deeper by the end; a metaphor not just for the literal threat, but for the speed at which empathy can move, once mobilized. And when the final act arrives, it does so not with a deafening crash, but with a sense of moral gravity.
In an age of endless cinematic universes and fatigue-inducing franchises, Bullet Train Explosion is a surprising anomaly: a film that believes not only in tension and spectacle, but in people. It moves at the speed of humanity. And it’s worth catching before it leaves the station.
