At The Movies: Bullet Train is a zippy ride, Emergency Declaration stumbles

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Bullet Train stars Brad Pitt as a hitman whose seemingly simple assignment faces complications.

PHOTO: SONY PICTURES RELEASING SINGAPORE

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Bullet Train (M18)

126 minutes, opens Aug 4

4 stars
The story: Five assassins with connected yet conflicting agendas are on a Shinkansen bullet train speeding across modern-day Japan in this Hollywood adaptation of Kotaro Isaka's 2010 Japanese bestseller, Maria Beetle. Brad Pitt plays the unlucky American hitman, codenamed Ladybug, who just wants to complete his simple assignment to grab a briefcase from a passenger.
Three reasons to watch this film:

1. Movie star wattage

Pitt aside, confidently cool despite goofy glasses, there are Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada as a yakuza elder and American actor Michael Shannon as a crazed Russian kingpin. A couple more A-listers delight in cameos.

2. Popcorn ride

Bullet Train overruns. The darkly comic action caper is otherwise ridiculously fun because of the outlandish characters, so a shout-out, too, to the rest of the international ensemble, especially Joey King, whose faux-schoolgirl act literally slays.
The director, David Leitch of John Wick (2014) and Deadpool 2 (2018), was a stuntman, on many occasions Pitt's stunt double. He knows his way around hyper-stylised violence, and the scuffles in the moving carriages are choreographed with brio and wit.

3. Blood ties

The British gunman duo of Aaron Taylor-Johnson's Tangerine and Brian Tyree Henry's Lemon are plainly not twins like they say. But they are, endearingly, brothers for life, and family emerges as the theme in this fable of ill-fated encounters.
Every individual gets a satisfying arc, whether or not he or she survives the journey.

Lee Byung-hun and Song Kang-ho star in Emergency Declaration.

PHOTO: ENCORE FILMS

Emergency Declaration (PG13)

140 minutes, opens Aug 4

2 stars
The story: A South Korean airliner declares an emergency mid-flight following a deadly virus attack. Lee Byung-hun appears among the doomed passengers as an aerophobe travelling with his daughter. Song Kang-ho is a police detective back in Seoul, his wife also on board, and Jeon Do-yeon is the transport minister who convenes a crisis response task force.
Three things to note about this film:

1. Disaster spectacles are irresistible entertainment

South Korea's first aviation disaster blockbuster, filmed in a fully constructed aircraft, Emergency Declaration fulfils every genre requirement for a big-ticket event with its 25 billion won (S$26.3 million) budget and multiple melodramatic storylines both in the air and on the ground.
There is also a starry cast that includes Yim Si-wan as the creepy bioterrorist. Question: How could airport security have missed the K-pop idol?

2. Uncanny timeliness

Director Han Jae-rim wrote the screenplay before the global pandemic. He could not have foreseen how familiar his scenario would become, all those paranoid individuals turning against one another for self-preservation as the contagion spreads.

3. Moral predicament

Should the plane be permitted to land at the risk of infecting the populace? The politicians elect no, and the carrier, already low on fuel, is left circling, whereupon the plot itself begins to go round and round.
The torpor is only finally broken by a laughably unscientific act of heroism because inspirational messages are another imperative of a disaster movie.
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