‘Bullet Train' Goes Off the Rails, but Pitt Doesn't

Aboard the speeding locomotive of “Bullet Train” ride at least five assassins, one venomous reptile (a snake on the train), countless glib Guy Ritchieesque slo-mo action sequences, and one buckethat wearing Brad Pitt.

It’s a lot of ingredients that go into this candy-colored, battle royale of a movie. But the only one that really matters is that last one. At 58, Pitt’s star power has never seemed so easy and so natural. Radiant in “Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood,” delicious in “The Lost City,” Pitt glides into “Bullet Train” in an rarified state of cruise control. Seldom has a movie star seemed to be having so much fun.

In “Bullet Train,” which opens in theaters Friday, Pitt plays a hired gun by profession but little else. His code name is Ladybug. He doesn’t like guns. And in his first job back after a hiatus of self-reflection and therapy, he goes into lethal fights with great reluctance, spouting self-help slogans like “Hurt people hurt people” in the midst of hand-to-hand combat. Pitt, a maximum movie star with a minimalist bent, is a hitman with no taste for hitting.