Didn’t think this film would make as many Thomas the Tank Engine jokes as it did, but man did it get me every single time.
This was just a blast. A hyper-violent, gory mess of chaotic energy that is just a bunch of dumb fun. You can feel the cast having a ball emanating from the screen. Brad Pitt effortlessly delivers lines with such comedic ease that makes him just a wonderfully charismatic lead to watch. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is the stand out of the film for me, just everything he did, the way he retorted at characters, his back and forth with Brian Tyree Henry and his delivery of the quips was perfection.
Clearly everyone is having fun here but if I’m to critique the cast…the accents. What happened? Tyree Henry, while hilarious, has one of the worst accents I’ve heard in a film recently and Joey King, again while a fun character, just didn’t nail her accent either. It gets to a point where it is glaringly distracting in some scenes, which is sad as what they’re saying generally is funny. But if they were that bad they should’ve just had their own accents.
Clearly this was directed by a man who has experience with stunt work, cause the action on offer here is thrilling. There’s not just a few set pieces, with fun action scenes in the film, the entire film is just one continuous set piece filled with action packed climaxes. The editing matches this frantic energy, with cuts and fun edits splattered all over the runtime, much like the blood spilled all over the carts of the train. Does it always hit? No. But it doesn’t have to, you can feel the enthusiasm through the edits and that just adds to the excitement of the film.
It’s not perfect, there’s a whole bunch of continuity errors and the plot is unnecessarily complex, to the point where at the end I had to recount why each assassin was there, but go in expecting a dumb fun film with some cool action and some great comedy and then you’ll enjoy this.
The small nod to Percy Jackson was a perfect joke, thanks for that.
★★★1/2
