An affectionate and well-realised update of Junya Sato's The Bullet Train, Bullet Train Explosion's devotion to delivering relentless edge-of-your-seat thrills ensures it's a blast from the moment it leaves the station. After his masterful reworking of Ultraman 3 years ago, I've been patiently waiting for Shinji Higuchi's next film. While the visual effects, direction, cinematography and camerawork are all top-notch, the carnage feels relatively restrained compared to Higuchi's prior work. However, even then, the film's greatest strength lies in its construction of tension and its commitment to showing how people respond to chaos. Some rise while others fall. Even with Higuchi as the film's conductor, this is still very much a one-track film, where Sato's original cross-cuts the action on board its Shinkansen with Ken Takakura's criminal antics, and here we are solely dedicated to the action on board. Despite its familiarity, there's also a fair dose of originality, although the late-game villain reveal had me howling with unintentional laughter. It's a long journey, full of near misses and assorted beats of suspense; although it abandons the complicating human factors that gave the original its soul, the film works very effectively as both a remake and a legacy sequel alike, even if the first half is far stronger than its latter half. Backed by strong performances and a rousing score by Taisei Iwasaki, Bullet Train Explosion is an effectively solid action disaster throwback, full of collectivism and collaboration.
