Critics mainly wanted to get off the Bullet Train because they thought Brad Pitt's newest film was off course.
The 2010 bestseller novel by Japanese novelist Ktar Isaka was adapted for the big screen by Deadpool 2 director David Leitch.
On his way from Tokyo to Kyoto, Pitt portrays a resurrected hitman who, with the guidance of his handler (Sandra Bullock), engages a number of assassins.
It was "weirdly tiresome and terribly unfunny," according to The Guardian.
In his two-star review, Peter Bradshaw said, "It rattles fiercely on and on and on with unexciting and uninterestingly choreographed fights, cameos that temporarily pep up the intrigue, and placeholder non-lines where the amusing material should have gone."
"Pitt's puppyish goodness stops it from going completely flat, but he doesn't have a story or a director like Soderbergh, Tarantino, or Fincher.
Additionally, the Japanese setting is treated quite sloppily; jokes about Japanese toilets should have been retired in the 1980s. This is a pointless tourist attraction.
On Wednesday, the action-comedy movie was made available in the UK.
Pitt, who plays the skilled but unlucky-of-late assassin Ladybug, makes a new commitment to personal development and rejoins the criminal underworld after receiving what appear to be straightforward instructions from Bullock's Maria Beetle to retrieve a briefcase from the movie's titular bullet train.
However, along the road, the American finds himself up against a number of other quirky hired murderers who are also vying for the prize, including those played by actors Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Joey King, and the rapper Bad Bunny.
Robbie Collin, who reviewed it for the Telegraph, gave it only one star and called Bullet Train "the cinematic equivalent of the delayed 17.20 to Didcot Parkway," seeming even less thrilled than Bradshaw.
The script, translated by Zak Olkewicz, veers between edginess by committee (plenty of cursing and want to be Guy Ritchie riffing) and occasionally astounding laziness, according to what he said: "The film's portrayal of Japan, which is mostly recreated in computer graphics, is clankingly inauthentic."
Both reviewers cited a particularly awful passage in which Pitt ends a comedic monologue by asking the audience to add "I don't know, something funny."
Collin emphasized that the 58-year-old Pitt was "badly miscast" as the "motor-mouthing smart-ass" lead actor in the film.
For Screen Daily, they are "a rogues' gallery of lovable weirdos, with Leitch delighting in watching them bounce off each other as they are trapped on the same fast-moving transport," and flashbacks help the audience understand how Pitt's Ladybug and his attackers have all arrived on the same train at the same time.
Tim Grierson stated, "Bullet Train has no lack of gleeful, madcap exuberance, trying to appease diehard genre fans with its brutal, over-the-top violence and mounting corpse count. However, this hefty train disproves to be neither laughably immoral nor violently liberating—it generally merely spins its wheels while creating quite a ruckus.
But Metro's Tori Brazier, who gave it four stars, had a more favorable opinion.
With its slapstick choreography, unexpected Hollywood appearances, and viciously comic usage of fluffy Japanese mascots, "Bullet Train is a sleek and gratifying journey off the rails, which never takes itself too seriously," she noted.
As Brits, we can also support the entire scene that takes place in the train's quiet carriage and has Ladybug and Lemon (Tyree Henry) trying to hide their lethal fling from another passenger's loud tuts.
Hollywood icon Pitt received his first acting Oscar in 2020 for best supporting actor in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, after working in the industry for decades.
Pitt told Variety at his newest film's Los Angeles premiere this week that he left some of his character's riskier situations to his stuntman, choosing to concentrate on the humorous ones.
Pitt stated, "I try to get out of it, I adore a stuntman.
He said, "This one was action-comedy, which I've never done before. "[Director] David [Leitch] and I had long been discussing Jackie Chan; we were both huge admirers.
"Kind of like our Buster Keaton, he. He is incredibly gifted and underappreciated. The only thing that truly appealed to me was to just take action in that direction."
Bullet Train was described as a "wildly intricate, high-speed battle royal" by Variety.
The movie "feels like it came from the same brain as Snatch [the Guy Ritchie movie starring Brad Pitt], wearing its pop aesthetic on its sleeve - a Kill Bill-level blend of martial arts, manga, and gabby hit-man-movie elements, without the vision or humor it implies," according to Peter Debruge.
He went on to say that the characters are "twice as odd as required" in the pulp book adaption and that while "this may be a pleasant enough trip," nothing is "especially profound."
A similar response was expressed by Christina Newland of iNews, who wrote: "Bullet Train's arrogant tone isn't made up for by its occasionally amusing moments. When not even Brad Pitt can salvage it, you know it's horrible."
However, while sharing the same concerns as other reviewers, Empire could be more appealing.
Bullet Train's director's "post-Wick trajectory towards larger, splashier, more cartoonish terrain" was described by Ben Travis in a three-star review.
Like its counterpart in transportation, the Bullet Train is quick, sleek, and gleaming, but this one is more interested in looping back around on itself in knots of coincidences and contrivances, as a cavalcade of contract murderers battle within the cars.
"The outcomes are usually entertaining, particularly anytime Pitt is on screen, blow-drying his hair in a modified Japanese bathroom, reciting his treatment mantras ("Hurt people hurt others," for example), and quietly tussling with Lemon in the silent carriage.
His on-screen connection with Sandra Bullock's primarily off-screen manager is also endearing.
What it absolutely isn't, he said, is profound. "Style over substance feels like the main goal here (and the style is considerable in and of itself), yet Bullet Train only ever functions on a surface level," said one reviewer.
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