![]() However, he soon discovers that a crop of killers onboard have conflicting assignments of their own. Paramount’s “The Lost City,” which starred “Bullet Train” bit players Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum while featuring Pitt in a supporting role, also opened to $30 million this spring before eventually crossing $100 million domestically, showing that the public will still roll out for a crowdpleaser without franchise ties.ĭirected by Pitt’s former stunt double David Leitch, who has since helmed actioners like “Atomic Blonde” and “Deadpool 2,” the film features the star as a hitman who accepts a simple mission aboard a high-speed train in Japan. With August’s slate looking pretty light on high-profile releases, “Bullet Train” should be able to take advantage of a quiet theatrical landscape in the weeks ahead. Variety chief film critic Peter Debruge was mixed on the film, writing that it is “trying darnedest to channel the likes of Tarantino and Ritchie, even if the dialogue and mock-British accents aren’t nearly strong enough to earn such comparisons.”Īudiences have been more receptive to “Bullet Train.” The filmed earned a “B+” grade through research firm Cinema Score, indicating solid approval among general moviegoers. ![]() ![]() ![]() Even the signposts of Filipino cultural life proudly depicted - the food Susan makes, a halo-halo mall date between Junior and local girl Tala (Eva Noblezada, “Luck”), the family assembling the provisions/gift parcel called a balikbayan box for overseas loved ones - beg to be more than just representational shout-outs in an otherwise broadly generalized fractured-family tale.“Bullet Train” has earned a lukewarm response from critics, landing a 41% approval rating from top critics on review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes. Koy himself seems trapped trying to make his nervous comedic vigor work as character and shtick, but such are the pitfalls of turning one’s stand-up persona into multiplex fodder. Though it provides an excuse for amusing drop-ins by Tiffany Haddish (as a cop ex-girlfriend of Joe’s) and Filipino-American star Lou Diamond Phillips (as himself), the ginned-up endangerment is a flat time-waster when you’d rather see Joe squirming over family dynamics, not cartoon criminals. Yang, “Love Hard”), and money owed to a gangster (Asif Ali, “WandaVision”). ![]() Steven Spielberg certainly thought so after seeing one of Koy’s specials, he helped secure him a deal at Amblin for what would become “Easter Sunday” (which has a screenplay by Ken Cheng and Kate Angelo), the rare Hollywood film boasting a heavily Filipino-American cast.Ĭhelsea Handler Reveals Upcoming Book Will Spotlight Love Story With Jo Koy, Compares New Show to ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’īut while there’s believable guilt to be mined for comedy in Joe’s sweet, attentive cousin Eugene (Eugene Cordero, “Loki”), who has been lonely Susan’s surrogate son, that area of emotion-laced humor is always subsumed by a nonsensical, dominating action plot involving stolen Manny Pacquiao gloves, a mall-based fence (Jimmy O. Koy, who’s been packing arenas for years with his rabbity energy and humorous windows into family eccentricities and Filipino culture, seemed as natural a fit as any to get some of his act’s lasting characters into a movie. Of course, one doesn’t need to belong to a big Filipino clan like the movie’s onscreen Valencias to grasp that, and it’s almost quaint how that message is articulated for us at the end as some fresh bit of wisdom when, since scene one, relatives in various states of bickering aggravation (father-son, ex-ex, sister-sister, cousin-cousin) have been the comedy’s go-to note.Ī more lasting takeaway from “Easter Sunday” about what’s messy has to do with vehicles for stand-ups trying to break into movies. Inside the corny chaos of the going-back-home lark “Easter Sunday,” starring comedian Jo Koy, is the point that families are messy. ![]()
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