Early August saw the release of Bullet Train, a well-received action film filled with breathtaking thrills, omnipresent themes, and intricate motifs, and a plot which seems to pull you into it headfirst. The film features Brad Pitt as a private operative and former assassin codenamed Ladybug, who believes that he is infamously unlucky. He hates his codename and thinks that he was given it ironically, although his uncanny ability to evade all of the death that surrounds him seems to suggest otherwise. After taking some time off and learning more about philosophy, the once-accomplished assassin ironically renounces killing and decides that he’ll return to his job as a weaponless pacifist… which surprisingly doesn’t actually go down as well as he planned. Ladybug mistakes his first job, retrieving a briefcase filled with a Russian crime lord who viciously took over the Japanese yakuza, as easy, and is glaringly unprepared. His new mission thrusts him into a high speed (both literally and figuratively) world filled with dangerous rivals from around the globe, more similar to him than he realizes, but with missions that conflict with his own. While playing the role of a passenger on the bullet train, the fastest train in both Japan and the world, Ladybug must learn how to balance completing his mission and eliminating his foes in this deadly game of assassin, which noticeably lacks water guns. If he fails to win his deadly game before the bullet train reaches the end of the line, it might lead to his end…

Bullet Train truly exceeded all of my expectations. Its plot was well-written, labyrinthine enough so that it didn’t seem imitative, but simple enough so that the average viewer never felt lost, and filled with straightforward yet important and truly global themes. The script was witty but not verbose, and was matched by excellent acting. Luck plays an active and important role throughout the film, as Ladybug always counts himself as unlucky and a major antagonist consistently mentions her luck. Both characters eventually find out, over the course of the film, that luck is infinitely more complex than they initially gave it credit for. Fate also serves as an important theme throughout the film, eventually perceived as a type of restoring force that counteracts the effects of luck and leads to something akin to balance.

The less obvious, but perhaps most important, theme throughout the film is the theme of family. Two private operatives that Ladybug must deal with in order to complete his own mission, the twins, have an extremely close brother-like relationship despite not being biologically related. An important character decides to board the infamous bullet train because he wants to find the person who pushed his son off a roof, partly to avenge his son’s grievous injuries but partly because he is unable to deal with the guilt of not being there to protect his son. Forces, resulting from actions taken by all of the private operatives on the bullet train (including Ladybug), cause this precious father-son relationship to come into conflict with the intimate fraternal relationship between the twins, forcing the heartbroken but empowered audience to support the preservation of one at the expense of the other. After a ton of death and destruction, the private operatives that still live reach a shaky truce, but must still confront and overcome antagonists whose motivations are primarily driven by familial pain…