The 2022 action-comedy Bullet Train, starring Brad Pitt, zooms onto Netflix this week, but which characters survive the journey’s climax?
The film sees five assassins board a Japanese bullet train bound for Kyoto, only to find that their seemingly separate missions are mysteriously linked by circumstances beyond their control.
Pitt stars as Ladybug, a killer who is suffering from anxiety and considers himself unlucky. Sandra Bullock plays his handler Maria Beetle, while Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Brian Tyree Henry play Tangerine and Lemon, two hapless twin assassins.
Meanwhile, Andrew Koji’s Yuichi Kimura is hunting down his son’s attacker, who we later learn is The Prince, played by Joey King.
The Prince is the estranged daughter of the Yakuza crime lord The White Death (Michael Shannon), and she is attempting to blackmail Yuichi into killing The White Death, for whom Yuichi works.
Bullet Train was directed by David Leitch, the former stunt man who has also helmed the current release The Fall Guy, starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt. Leitch also directed Atomic Blonde and Deadpool 2.
In a three-star review of the film, NME wrote: “When he’s not trying to be Quentin Tarantino or Guy Ritchie, Leitch proves just how good he is at being himself.”
“It’s almost impossible not to enjoy every moment that Pitt is on screen. Stealing the film with whatever he’s given (a water bottle, a bucket hat, an automatic toilet…), he’s clearly having a great time. It’s lucky for us that at least some of it rubs off.”
Who survives the ending of Bullet Train?
As the train starts hurtling out of control in the film’s final act, The Prince has managed to detain Lemon and Yuichi in a bathroom, while Tangerine has been killed.
With The Prince and Ladybug remaining, Yuichi’s father The Elder boards the train. He informs The Prince that Yuichi’s son, who she had been holding hostage with a henchman, is now safe with the family.
The Elder explains that he intends to confront The White Death himself, as he had killed The Elder’s wife while rising to the top of the Yakuza.
Arriving at Kyoto, the remaining assassins meet The White Death, who reveals that he had organised for all of them to be on the train together, with the intention that they would all kill each other, given their various links to his wife’s death.
An explosion knocks the characters back onto the train, which collides head-on with another bullet train and crashes into downtown Kyoto. The White Death emerges, having been impaled on The Elder’s sword, and as he attempts to kill Ladybug, he is shot by a gun that was rigged to backfire by The Prince.
With Ladybug, Yuichi and The Elder left standing, The Prince threatens to kill them all, but is hit suddenly by a truck. Maria Beetle arrives to pick up Ladybug, who tells her that he no longer believes he is unlucky, but that everything is subject to fate.
What happens in the mid-credits scene?
The extra scene reveals that the truck that hit The Prince in the finale was being driven by Lemon. He had jumped from the speeding train and landing in water, before killing his pursuing henchmen.
Back on land, he comes across an abandoned truck bearing images of lemons and tangerines. In memory of his fallen twin, he commandeers the vehicle and drives towards the train wreckage. Seeing The Prince, who killed Tangerine, he hits the accelerator as he speeds towards her.
