Passengers and professionals unite to avoid a Bullet Train Explosion in glossy thriller

This is just one counterintuitive choice that slows the roll of Bullet Train Explosion. The sprawling cast, all of whom must get their time in the spotlight, is another. After a voice-modulated terrorist calls in a bomb threat, having planted explosives that will detonate if the bullet train drops below 100 km/h on its way to Tokyo, the film’s attention flits around an ensemble befitting an old-school disaster movie. Onboard, the duty-bound morality of diamond-cut conductor (Tsuyoshi Kusanagi) and increasingly sweaty driver (Non) are juxtaposed with broadly painted archetypes among the goofy passengers: a pompous entrepreneur/influencer (Jun Kaname), a disgraced politician (Machiko Ono), a pair of dyed-hair delinquents, and a gaggle of uniformed schoolchildren panic in the aisles after the truth comes out over the intercom. Sequences set off-train involve the lightly conflicting groups trying to save them. At East Japan Railway Company HQ, good-hearted company men and grumpy old cops argue with a greasy little bastard from the government.

These groups have a common goal—a minimum of exploded passengers, trains, and city blocks—though how they achieve it forms the meat of the movie. The government won’t negotiate with terrorists, so any hopes of paying the bomber’s ¥100B ransom will need to come from other sources. The train can’t stop or slow down, so the dispatchers must devise a few clever schemes to avoid obstacles on its tracks and attempt to mitigate any possible detonation. Collectivism and collaboration are the thematic train cars trailing behind Bullet Train Explosion‘s moral locomotive: that the greatest hero of all is a good employee. There’s more than a hint of this film being a train company commercial, which does plenty to undermine the drama. A movie about how trustworthy and devoted train crews are probably isn’t going to let a bunch of kids die in a fireball.

When contained in smaller, more hands-on moments—like the construction of a makeshift gangway between train cars, or the physical movement of tracks as a train bears down on the burly men banding together to shift its steel—the film’s focus on human cooperation can glow with a John Henry-like pride. More often though, after endless stage-setting, the climaxes of these VFX-heavy setpieces unfold with an ironic artificiality. Scale models and blinking-light maps lend a charming tactility to the rescue’s planning stage, but the too-smooth CG and short shot times sap the action of gravity. Even some of the script’s more ridiculous ideas, ideas that actually fit the over-the-top title of Bullet Train Explosion—like evacuating and deconstructing part of the train while in motion, or the final gamble from the silly villain that eventually emerges—lose steam due to the demands on film’s limited attention span.

Though the details of Bullet Train Explosion‘s plot tie cheesy connections to the pulpy, realist original, its tone couldn’t be more different. A grimy human drama between disillusioned perpetrators and desperate saviors, all swirling around an elegantly brutal threat, The Bullet Train found its tension and heart away from the action. Despite remaking much of that film (Taisei Iwasaki and Yuma Yamaguchi’s tense score being one of the most successful throwbacks), Bullet Train Explosion abandons the complicating human factors that gave the original its soul. It makes the same mistake as so many modern blockbusters: confusing bigger, louder, and simpler with better.

Director: Shinji Higuchi
Writer: Kazuhiro Nakagawa, Norichika Ōba
Starring: Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, Kanata Hosoda, Non, Takumi Saitoh, Machiko Ono, Jun Kaname, Hana Toyoshima
Release Date: April 23, 2025 (Netflix)