Bullet Train

It's a high-speed bullet train running from Tokyo to Morioka. Former underworld heavy, Kimura has boarded the Shinkansen to mete out revenge after his son was pushed off a roof by the sociopathic 14 year old known as The Prince. Meanwhile Thomas the Tank Engine loving Lemon and his partner, the more erudite Tangerine, have left a bloody trail after rescuing the top crime boss, Mr. Minegishi's, son along with the ransom money in a marked suitcase. And Nanao, the self-dubbed “unluckiest assassin in the world” is there to steal that suitcase. And that's just the set-up. Things get truly wild from there.

It's the world of John Wick: Japanese transit edition. This is the bit of thriller escapism I've been looking for and The Prince - though royally annoying, and one of those literary characters you wish you could just smack across the head with the book as you're reading it - offers up some timely observations around groupthink, persuasion and people's inability to see the bars of their own cage. Punk kid still deserves a swift kick though.

As the bodies start piling up it does begin to teeter towards ridiculousness, but the confined space with multiple players intersecting over the course of the story delivers constant momentum. I suspect this could very well be a case where the movie will be better than the book.