YMMV / Bullet Train

• Adorkable:
  • Ladybug's sense of fashion, consistently upbeat personality, and his fascination with Japanese toilets and wasabi peas make him oddly endearing in spite of being an assassin.
  • Lemon is a ruthless assassin, but his obsession with Thomas & Friends and how serious and reverent he is about it makes him amusing to watch.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Why does The White Death spare his daughter's life? Is it because deep down he loves her, he doesn't consider her worthy of killing, or simply because he continues to consider her a useful pawn in a potential arranged marriage? Alternatively, has he finally learned to respect her, it's just that he's got bigger fish to fry right now? "I see you, but you're not part of my plan."
• Awesome Music:
  • Ladybug's introduction is scored to a Japanese language cover of "Stayin' Alive," done by Avu-chan. It perfectly sets the tone of the movie, and sounds great too.
  • The final fight scene, kicking off to a Japanese language dance cover of "Holding Out for a Hero" in one of the best uses of the song since Shrek 2 and Short Circuit 2.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Ladybug is either a fun and easily likable lead whose quirks make him endearing, or an annoying and one-note Pinball Protagonist who takes screentime away from the other characters, who are arguably more interesting than he is.
  • The Prince has proved to be very divisive: some find her to be fun to watch due to being a manipulative schemer who's nowhere near as smart as she thinks she is and her surprisingly sympathetic motivation and backstory, or annoying due to her smug behavior and Big Bad Wannabe tendencies, and think that her motive is tacked-on to try to make her seem more complex than she actually is.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • After witnessing the violent coup of the clan that took him in, which also resulted in the death of The Elder's wife, it's a relief to witness The White Death's , well, death when the rigged gun he took from The Prince (his own daughter) literally explodes in his face. It's better when you remember that his method of killing involves using an assassin's own weapon against them.
  • However, perhaps the biggest moment comes afterward. After being smug and condescending for the entire movie and causing all the pain of multiple characters, such as pushing Yuichi's son Wataru off a rooftop and then forcing him to work for her if he wishes to keep him alive; manipulating Lemon to shoot Yuichi to throw suspicion off herself before shooting him; and especially manipulating Ladybug against Tangerine, which results in the latter's death, it's very satisfying to see The Prince's plans ultimately fall apart when A) The Elder reveals he had an assassin to protect his grandson in the hospital, who kills the one meant for Wataru, and B) she is reduced to a ranting mess before getting run over by a tangerine truck driven by Lemon, avenging his brother's death.
• Cliché Storm: The plot is not all that original. However, Tropes Are Tools: audiences didn't mind it much, regarding it as a solid action/comedy film that is engaging enough by itself, even if its plot is fairly by-the-numbers.
• Complete Monster: "The Hornet" is a particularly vicious assassin who lacks the standards her contemporaries hold. Specializing in "Boomslang Venom," which agonizingly kills people as they bleed from their orifices, Hornet is shown to target a doctor; a Cartel wedding, indiscriminately murdering Cartel members and their family members, including "the Wolf's" innocent wife; and kills a train hostess to steal her uniform. Confronting "Ladybug", Hornet is smugly delighted at the thought of poisoning him, taunting him all the while.
• Critical Dissonance: The movie did not review particularly well, holding a 53% Rotten score from professional reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes. However, average viewers appear to have enjoyed the movie much more, with a user review score of 76%. It seems that reviewers didn't care for how unoriginal and derivative the movie could be while viewers felt it was just a fun and clever popcorn movie and didn't mind that it wasn't breaking new ground.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Wolf's death, which pretty much establishes the tone of the film. The entire time, Wolf is so hell-bent on killing Ladybug he doesn't even bother hearing him out, with the latter using the briefcase to defend himself. Culminating in Wolf accidentally killing himself when his own thrown knife bounces off the briefcase and hits him square in the chest. And just in case you thought he might not quite die from that, when he falls over and collapses, he falls on top of the briefcase at the exact angle that his neck audibly breaks and he's staring into the extremely perplexed Ladybug's face. All Ladybug can do is resignedly muse on the toxicity of anger.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The conductor and concession girl are relatively minor Innocent Bystanders, but are well-liked for having some surprisingly good scenes and lines while unknowingly being surrounded by killers. The latter is especially beloved due to being a sweet and bubbly Nice Girl played by Karen Fukuhara.
  • The Fiji Water Bottle, of all things, has become popular for its surprise importance to the plot and for being a memorable Chekhov's Gun in a movie full of them, with some fans even jokingly counting it as one of the many characters that make up the Ensemble Cast.
• Evil Is Cool: Despite looking rather scruffed and not having the best accent, The White Death is funny, menacing, and even both in the scenes he appears in; not only is The Chessmaster behind most of the assassins gathered in the train for their roles (however minor) in his wife's death, he's also a Worthy Opponent to The Elder and comes close to defeating him.
• Fanfic Fuel: The Wrap describes The White Death's relationship with The Prince by saying "[a]lthough only pieces of their shared backstory are revealed, King and Shannon do a great job of implying that a more complex history exists without actually spelling it out for the audience."
• Genius Bonus: The novel Prince is seen reading is Trevanian's Shibumi, a novel about a Westerner raised in Japan who becomes one of the world's top assassins.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • When Tangerine and Lemon decide to split up and search for the briefcase, Tangerine, in a rare moment of sincerity for him, tells Lemon to be careful. Regardless of how much he argues with Lemon, they are brothers through and through and they look out for each other.
  • When Lemon learns that Tangerine has been killed, he honors his brother in the best way that he can: dubbing him a "Thomas" and placing a Thomas sticker on his body.
  • Any time that Maria expresses anything other than annoyance towards Ladybug, such as her attempts to reassure him that he does not have bad luck whenever he complains about it or her calming him down after his anxiety gets the better of him. The ending also reveals that she spent most of the movie trying to get to his location and get him off the train once she realized that he was in danger, even though she didn't have to.
  • The Elder giving Ladybug, who dislikes his codename and even reaches a low point after accidentally and pointlessly killing Tangerine, some pearls of wisdom.
  • When Lemon attempts to beat up Ladybug for killing Tangerine, Yuichi holds him back.
  • Yuichi using the water bottle to distract the White Death when he's about to kill the Elder, finally being able to protect a member of his family when he couldn't do it beforehand, something that the Elder acknowledges.
  • Lemon is able to express genuine forgiveness towards Ladybug for accidentally killing Tangerine and apologizes for having shot him twice when they were in Johannesburg, which Ladybug forgives him for in turn. While it is ruined a moment later, the thought still counts, and Lemon tackles a henchman who was about to shoot Ladybug out of the train.
  • As a meta example, Joey King felt very overwhelmed and out-of-place on set initially, as she'd never filmed an action movie before and most of the cast were much older than her, but Brad Pitt and David Leitch both reassured her that she was going to be fine and that she belonged there just as much as everyone else, which did a lot to help ease her worries.
• He's Just Hiding:
  • Some fans wonder if The Prince might have survived being run over by a truck after the train crashes.
  • Some fans like to imagine that Tangerine and/or The Wolf only passed out from blood loss due to the difficulty of imagining the world of the film without them.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: A month before the film's premiere, Joey King played a character known only as "The Princess": an Action Girl who displays both Tomboy Princess and Warrior Princess traits, relying on both to be a Damsel out of Distress. Here, she plays a character known only as "The Prince": a Smug Snake Manipulative Bastard who dresses up in Psycho Pink and relies on her Master Actor abilities to get out of sticky situations. In other words, the complete opposite of each other. Even better, they are also both an example of "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl.
• Inferred Holocaust: During the climax, the now out-of-control train rams another one, derailing it, and then jumps the tracks and crashes into a small town, demolishing several buildings. The odds that no one was killed in all of that are very low, even factoring in Ladybug's presence and how people seem to avoid death by accident due to his actions.
• Jerkass Woobie: The Wolf is a hot-blooded Cartel assassin with a very high body count who takes the belongings from his marks as trophies. In spite of that, he had genuine respect for his boss and got into a happy relationship, all of which was stripped away from him on his wedding day when everyone suffered from deadly poisoning. The fact that he lost his mother to what's implied to be an illness in his childhood only puts the icing on the cake. His death, while a direct result of his actions, was sheerly unintentional on Ladybug's part, and he never gets closure for any of his losses. However, the person who actually poisoned everyone and killed his wife was killed by an ironic twist of fate making it somewhat less painful.
• Just Here for Godzilla: A lot of people are only here for Lemon and Tangerine (or just Tangerine), as they're fan favorites who are largely considered to be the most iconic part of the movie, with some even going so far as to say that they're the only reason the movie is worth watching.
• Magnificent Bastard: "The Elder" is a wise Yakuza whose boss was slain and betrayed by the White Death, he himself barely surviving with his son. Waiting for the day Fate would deliver him revenge, the Elder finally gets his chance when his son is forced to work for "The Prince" with his own son a hostage. When the Elder confronts the Prince, he reveals that he anticipated his grandson was a target after he was pushed off of a building, having the would-be assassin murdered and calmly mocking her. Working with the surviving cast to turn the White Death's trap against him, the Elder easily dispatches his underlings before finally confronting his nemesis. Fighting valiantly, the Elder and his family survive the ordeal while the White Death dies, the Elder's vengeance finally delivered.
• Moe: Besides having some great scenes with the main characters, most notably when she gets in the way of Ladybug and Tangerine's fight, the Concessions Girl is also popular with fans for being plain adorable.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • When we get introduced to The Prince, we get informed that she has the hospitalized son of The Father watched by an assassin, threatening to kill him if he doesn't do as she says. From then on, any sympathy she might gather later is rendered moot.
  • The White Death crosses it before the events of the movie when, even after he climbs up the Minegishi family when they took him in, he violently usurps the top position for himself before killing Minegishi and everyone else, including the family of The Elder.
  • The Hornet might've crossed it before when we get The Reveal that she was the one who poisoned the wedding on El Saguaro, killing the wife of The Wolf, but she firmly crosses it when she poisoned the surgeon meant to perform surgery on The White Death's wife, who eventually dies as a result of her actions and thus puts the events of the film into motion.
• Narm Charm:
  • Lemon honoring his brother's death by dubbing him a "Thomas" sounds ridiculous on paper, but the scene itself is surprisingly heart-wrenching, helped a lot by Brian Tyree Henry's performance making Lemon's whole gimmick feel genuine.
  • In a movie with accomplished actors like Brad Pitt, Brian Tyree Henry, Joey King, and Hiroyuki Sanada, it only makes it stand out that Bad Bunny... isn't. It may seem acceptable due to being his first film with a semi-major role, and commentators agree that he manages to handle his few scenes quite well. As such, in the context of the primarily comedic tone in the rest of the film, his goofy wolf howl, exaggerated walk, and over-the-top facial expressions can work in his favor.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The effects of the boomslang snake venom causes its victims' blood to congeal and make them bleed from every orifice. The first time we see this is the flashback to The Wolf's wedding, where everyone but him is bleeding from the eyes and violently vomiting blood.
  • The White Death's Signature Move for certain targets: He takes a revolver, rolls the cylinder along his arm to randomize where the one bullet is, and then plays Russian Roulette with himself and his victim. It's a convoluted method, for sure, but it has some style...and it highlights just how terrifying the man is when he effectively puts your fate up to a coin flip.
• Nightmare Retardant: All movie The White Death is spoken of as the ultimate assassin, a living force of nature feared and dreaded by all. Then we actually see him. Revealing him to be Michael Shannon in a bad wig and sporting a worse Russian accent takes quite a bit of the veneer off of him.
• One-Scene Wonder: The movie is full of these, partially due to the film's Anyone Can Die nature.
  • The Wolf makes a big impression due to being a badass and his sympathetic backstory until he accidentally dies from his knife bouncing off the case Ladybug is holding and rebounding into his heart.
  • The Hornet is a rather dangerous assassin who racks up a rather big body count and then she dies during her first confrontation with Ladybug.
  • The White Death, as played by Michael Shannon. Despite the aforementioned Nightmare Retardant listed above, he makes the absolute most of his relatively brief screen time in the film, managing to switch from hammy to genuinely chilling and back again effortlessly, living up to the serious threat he's described as throughout the film.
  • About the only non-lethal example of this in the film is Channing Tatum's appearance as a guy looking to hook up with other guys on the train who mistakes Ladybug's bribe offer as a come-on. He reappears later on and comments on Tangerine's Team Power Walk.
• Questionable Casting:
  • Michael Shannon as The White Death gets this. With the description of the character being a 2 meter tall monster of a Russian. While some agree that he ultimately does a decent job at the part, many fans probably expected Dolph Lundgren doing his Ivan Drago Russian accent.
  • Casting Karen Fukuhara who's mostly known for action roles as The Concession Girl who gets to do barely anything before The Hornet knocks her out for her uniform.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The scene where Tangerine finds what he believes is Lemon's dead body. After spending most of the movie engaging in Snark-to-Snark Combat with his brother, seeing him so genuinely shaken at his brother's supposed death is heartbreaking. The flashback to their childhood, showing them as young brothers simply living their life, and the wordless way he places his necklace around Lemon's neck only make the scene more devastating.
  • Making the above worse is that Lemon actually survived, and was merely unconscious due to a sleeping drug. Unfortunately, by the time that happens Tangerine is accidentally killed by Ladybug, and now it's Lemon's turn to learn of his brother's death, which is just as heartbreaking as before. He sits next to his dead brother's body before pulling out his Thomas & Friends stickers and declaring that Tangerine was actually a "Thomas" after all, and then ending the scene by giving a Skyward Scream of anguish. However, Lemon gets some sort of closure after running over The Prince with a tangerine truck while laughing madly.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Though it does a good job establishing how Anyone Can Die in darkly humorous circumstances, its a bit of a shame seeing The Wolf killed off almost immediately after witnessing his badass feats and tragic backstory.
  • The fact that The Concession Girl is played by Karen Fukuhara and had a prominent presence on the first poster makes one think that she'd inevitably be revealed as another assassin. Nope. Instead, she appears a couple of times before getting subdued by The Hornet.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: A common criticism from detractors is that the movie is too reminiscent of the style of Quentin Tarantino or Guy Ritchie, with several critics comparing it to the movies made by the many Tarantino wannabes that dominated the film festival circuit in the late 90s.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • You might expect a showdown, or really any kind of interaction between The Wolf and The Hornet given the former's only there to kill the latter, but the two never meet. Albeit both end up being seated opposite each other after their deaths.
  • The distance covered by the train in the movie is done in two and a half hours in real life, not twelve. Staying true to reality would have allowed the movie to take place in real time.
• Too Cool to Live: The Wolf has a tragic backstory, a badass suit, amazing fight skills, and a cool Mexican theming overall. He gets killed as soon as he arrives on the train.
• Unexpected Character: While Sandra Bullock's cameo was well-publicized before release to the point where she appeared in one of the trailers, very few people expected her and Brad Pitt's The Lost City co-star Channing Tatum to cameo as well. And even more unexpected was Ryan Reynolds' two-second cameo as Carver, repaying Pitt for the quick cameo that he had in Deadpool 2.
• Unpopular Popular Character: The Son is disliked by every character he interacts with: Lemon and Tangerine can barely stand him, his sister mocks him when she comes across his dead body, and his own father calls him useless and arranges to have him killed. Despite this, he is very popular with fans due to Logan Lerman's Love to Hate performance and for the interesting dynamics he has with his family. Several fanfictions where he survives will flesh out his personality and give him a more complex relationship with the Prince.
• The Woobie: The Concession Girl on the train. She is very polite and friendly during her appearances in the film. And then she is apparently subdued by The Hornet in order to steal her uniform as a disguise. She theoretically may have survived due to a coffee pot being used to knocked out, but there is a clear blood spray when the Hornet hits her and she is never seen again afterwards. However, it's likely she was taken out with everyone else since The White Death buys out the train during the climax.

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