'Bullet Train,' 'Prey' make old formulas fresh

A common criticism of certain films is that they're "formulaic," which I dislike as a criticism, because it's imprecise.

A formula, after all, is simply a set of descriptions and measurements of specific ingredients, illustrating how and when to combine them, in order to achieve the results you're looking for.

In that sense, a formula is a rudimentary story, and while it's true certain stories can feel hindered, or perhaps even trapped, by their underlying formulas, it's a mark of a versatile formula when you can make it feel fresh by switching up its ingredients.

'Bullet Train'

"Bullet Train" is hardly flawless, but it's delightfully lightweight, and it belongs to one of a number of subgenres whose formula relies on appearing ironically anarchic.

We've all seen a Crime Caper Gone Awry film before, often in the form of multiple competing hoodlums (and the occasional cops) all vying for the same McGuffin.

The entertaining and ostensibly unpredictable chaos comes from seeing various heavily armed quirky personalities with low impulse control sabotaging each other's best-laid plans to snatch the briefcase, shoot the target or secure the safety of the hostage.

"Bullet Train" remixes this beat just a bit, by shoving a bunch of thieves and/or killers, variously motivated by money or revenge, onto the same overnight high-speed Japanese bullet train traveling from Tokyo to Kyoto as they all seek to complete their own seemingly independent and unrelated assignments.

High-speed trains are a natural setting for crime capers, because any mysterious murder onboard a train is, by definition, a locked-room murder mystery, which is already fun, even before the locked room happens to be hurtling down train tracks at more than 100 mph.

Director David Leitch comes to "Bullet Train" from 2014's "John Wick," 2017's "Atomic Blonde," 2018's "Deadpool 2," 2019's "Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw" and 2021's "Nobody," so he understands his assignment.

Better yet, Leitch arms himself with such a surplus of acting talent for "Bullet Train" that some of them (Zazie Beetz) feel wasted in their roles, although the brevity of some actors' appearances is weaponized to give them hilariously pitch-perfect cameos.

Brad Pitt plays Ladybug, an experienced hireling who's soured on his job as he's come to realize that committing theft and murder for a living isn't exactly putting positive energy out into the universe, and he sets the tone for the rest of the cast by performing his overly constructed caricature of a role very effectively.

From Joey King as The Prince, a mercenary posing as a schoolgirl, to Brian Tyree Henry and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Lemon and Tangerine, racially mismatched brothers who partner as assassins, our eclectic, oddball characters feel as inspired by Quentin Tarantino as by the 2010 Japanese novel, "MariaBeetle," which serves as this film's source material.

But between the impeccably choreographed fight scenes and the story's refusal to let even its silliest running jokes die, as when Lemon successfully spots a covert adversary by using "Thomas the Tank Engine" as his guide to life, "Bullet Train" can't help but win you over.

Michael Shannon and Hiroyuki Sanada are effortlessly watchable in their walk-on parts, but extra-credit points go to Aaron Taylor-Johnson, whose Tangerine ferally transforms into one of Michael Caine's sneering, ruthless, bone-crunching thug roles from the 1970s.

'Prey'

In terms of formula, there is only one "Predator" film.

No, we are not discussing "Alien vs. Predator" films, because yes, that's a different formula.

The best "Predator" films - the 1987 original starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers and Jesse "The Body" Ventura, and the deeply underrated 1990 sequel starring Danny Glover, Gary Busey and Bill Paxton - open by dropping us into the middle of a deep-seated conflict between two or more rival tribes of feuding humans, whose talent for violence draws the inhuman big-game hunter from the stars.

It's a sci-fi twist on Richard Connell's classic short story, "The Most Dangerous Game," because whether it's U.S. commandos versus Central American guerillas, or L.A. cops versus Colombian and Jamaican drug cartels, the arrival of the titular "Predator" to Earth's war zones demotes even the most well-armed and technologically advanced of native combatants to no longer being the apex of the food chain.

"Prey" flips the script by transporting us to the Northern Great Plains of North America in September of 1719 - a year that should set the spider-senses of astute "Predator 2" fans a-tingling - as a Comanche tribe hunts, forages and treads carefully to avoid running afoul of French-Canadian trappers in the area.

"Prey" casts the Predator as a classic, unfiltered colonial trophy hunter at last, minus the previous films' subversions of pitting this alien invader against humans who were no-less-aggressive colonizers themselves.

What we see of the Comanche tribe hammers home that, while they kill wildlife to make meals of their meat, and furnish clothing and tools from their skin and bones, these people are essentially just trying to exist in relative peace with the natural environment and its other inhabitants.

A scene midway through the film underscores this dynamic, as we encounter an entire field of buffalo that have been skinned alive, leaving their carcasses to rot, and while it resembles the handiwork of the Predator, we learn later it was the "sport" of white trappers.

For all their tranquility, this film's initial scenes of idyllic tribal life are endlessly compelling to me, especially given the respect and authenticity with which the tribe's culture is depicted, although I hardly mind basking in the atmosphere of the cinematography's immersive wilderness vistas, either.

Native American actress Amber Midthunder plays Naru, a young Comanche with emerging gifts as both a herbal healer and a warrior woman, who yearns to prove herself as a hunter, like her brother Taabe (Dakota Beavers), in the face of her family's skepticism, only to find herself hunted when she goes out tracking.

Midthunder invests Naru's character with a headstrong fortitude and resourcefulness that easily establishes her as a peer to Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley and Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor, in the "Alien" and "Terminator" franchises, while the Predator's design in this prequel seems suitably less evolved than the versions we encounter closer to the contemporary "present day."

The entire package is capped off with what's arguably the single smartest kill in the "Predator" franchise, and if my words aren't persuasive enough, OG "Predator" star Jesse Ventura took to Twitter to compliment "Prey" as a film, while officially welcoming Amber Midthunder to "the Predator family" by telling her, "You definitely ain't got time to bleed" - high praise coming from "The Body."

"Prey" is the best "Predator" since the first film.

Author Bio

Kirk Boxleitner, Reporter

Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
[email protected]