One Place Only: The Bullet Train (Dir Junya Sato, 2h35m, 1975)

The chamberpiece film is a frequent traveller. Look no further than Locke (2013), set entirely in a car and only featuring Tom Hardy on screen, or the verité Taxi Tehran (2015),set entirely within a taxicab shot without permission and whilst director Jafar Panahi was banned from making films. Speed, (1994) is of course largely set on a bus, but so is the tragicomic Night Bus (2014) and much of Jim Jarmusch's Paterson, in which we settle into the mundane driving job of a would-be poet. Films on planes, boats and especially trains allow variety, and action, space, but confinement. From Korean action movies Snowpiercer (2013) and Train to Busan (2016) and the enjoyably daft Snakes on a Plane (2006) to the uncomfortable claustrophobia of Von Trier's Europa, (1990) and both versions of Murder on the Orient Express (1974/2017) 

No train, perhaps, has caught its nation's public imagination like the Japanese Shinkansen-the "Bullet Train". Since its introduction in the 1960s, it's become, so often paired with the looming Mount Fuji, a shorthand for the country post-war as technological colossus. On screen, the bullet train has played a similar role, from a brief but crucial appearance in Kurosawa's High and Low to the setting of Guy Ritchie-aping Hollywood action flick Bullet Train (2022), based on the novel by Kōtarō Isaka. Above all, though, is The Bullet Train, now enjoying a resurgence in popularity thanks to its remake, Bullet Train Explosion (2025) helmed by tokusatsu whiz Shinji Higuchi, a fast-moving battle of wits between would-be terrorists and the train company to destroy-or save-the bullet train.

To any fans of a certain 1994 Keanu Reeves feature, the plot will be familiar: a terrorist (in fact a trio of terrorists, including a left-wing extremist, Koga (Kei Yamamoto), a former businessman, Okita (Ken Takakura), and his employee (Akira Oda)) plant a bomb aboard Bullet Train 109, and demand $5 million for the safety of its passengers. The mechanism is simple: if the train slows below 80 km/h, the bomb will detonate. At risk are 1,500 passengers, a cross-section of Japanese society from pop-stars to pregnant mothers to criminals, together with the crew, including Sonny Chiba's engineer, who must coordinate with Kuramochi (Ken Utsui) to save the day. If this all sounds familiar, that may be down to the aforementioned Speed, with writer Graham Yost conflating Jon Voight action flick Runaway Train (in which no bomb features) with The Bullet Train.

So far, so familiar. Yet, there is more going for The Bullet Train than being the basis for Speed; for a start, the film's grounded realism when it comes to its antagonists is impressive, script writers Ryunosuke Ono and Junya Sato, who also directed, focusing on representive members at the bottom of Japanese society. All three of our major antagonists are, in some way, emblematic of the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s: the businessmen aboard the Bullet train that are threatened by Okita and his bomb may have profited from the Japanese economic miracle but Okita and his subordinate have been left in the dust, their small engineering company closing. Koga too is emblematic of another great social change, the loosening grip of student unions, and the student protestors of the 1960s now embittered against the Japan that has, once again, left them behind. These sequences are further fleshed out with occasional flashbacks, and, ruthless though their motive and execution of their plan is, we at least get to know the reason for them enacting it.

Aboard, though is where the film really shines: impressive given that, unlike its modern remake, Toho were not granted access to shoot the film on any actual trains, not to mention the bureaucracy of Japanese National Railways in giving technical suggestions, and their general reluctance in taking part in a film in which one of their trains was threatened by a bomb! As a result, the train-cars are sets, the landscapes passing outside are in fact covertly shot footage aboard the train, and even the driver's controls and the central control room were secretly filmed via subterfuge. Given all this, and the fact that the film often matches together model work and stock footage, the scenes aboard are still admirably tense; the film's trio of cinematographers often lingering on crowds as the panic in carriages begins to spread. One action sequence in particular shows one of the train's on-board telephones-pre-mobile phones-practically besieged by businessmen trying to call their offices as the train rumbles on. 

There is something claustrophobic about this space, even before the tension reaches breaking point, and like several of the films above it, it uses the confinement of a singular location, even one as large as this, superbly, not to mention the nail-biting scenes from the control room as Kuramochi attempts to keep the train from disaster. Against this is more high drama-the tautly scripted hunt for the bombers may take us out of the train and across much of Japan, but it's a necessary counterpoint, that only makes the tension aboard the train and the race against time to save its passengers all the tenser, as the police and the Railway both scramble for a solution. Whilst it may not be quite as confined as some of the films we have spoken about in this season so far, The Bullet Train uses claustrophobia and the ticking bomb at the heart of its narrative to present a thrilling action movie aboard the world famous train. 


Rating: Highly Recommended

The Bullet Train is available via Amazon Prime and on DVD from EUREKA!

Next week, we end this intimate month of movies with Wallace Shaun and André Gregory in Dinner With Andre