Parents' Guide to Bullet Train Explosion

Despite a few moments of bloody violence, this action drama feels like a young adult novel in tone. At its worst, Bullet Train Explosion is incredibly melodramatic and corny. There are plenty of impassioned monologues, tons of lingering reactions shots, and many pleas for the greater good to characters going through selfish moments. The film clearly wants to build to a momentous final moment, but a lot of the satisfaction of that inevitable victory (this kind of film will never end with "In the end, they failed to save everyone, and they all died") is dulled by how long it takes to get there. At well over two hours long, this movie doesn't have the story to fill that kind of length.

Even with this kind of duration, there are so many characters that none of them are developed or given much backstory at all (except for the villain). Each character seems to fill particularly thinly drawn types, like the schoolgirl, the politician, the social media star, the outcast, the train conductor, the protégé, the driver, and so on. But realism isn't likely what this film is going for, with all the characters working unrealistically smoothly and well with one another across different entities (the government, the train company, the people on the train, the people of Japan). At least when the final victory does come, it's eagerly awaited.