I don't believe this Japanese thriller has anything to do with the new Brad Pitt movie (besides the two having almost identical titles). I still don't know whether I'll see 2022's Bullet Train, but its release reminded me to watch 1975's The Bullet Train, and it ended up being a pretty good watch.
I always thought Speed had an original plot, but it takes the basic premise of this movie and puts the action on a bus, rather than a train. Because in The Bullet Train, there's a bomb on a train, and the train will explode if it drops below a certain speed, with the bombers wanting ransom money before they'll agree to disarm the bomb.
It does play out more like a large scale Hollywood disaster movie than a small-scale action-thriller. The scope is actually pretty wide, and I felt like most of the scenes didn't actually take place on the train - a big part of the movie is about finding the masterminds behind the bombing. The train scenes themselves are great, though. All really exciting, and I think it used real trains for the most part (or if there were miniatures used, I couldn't tell).
There are plenty of recognisable Japanese actors all doing solid work, and the film is mostly entertaining throughout, even if I didn't love it. I will say: I was a goose and didn't research properly before watching, so I watched an inferior version that was dubbed and about half an hour shorter than what I realise now is the original version. So for the stuff I didn't like, it might (well, probably would) be better in the original cut, so that's on me for jumping the gun and watching a re-edit like a doofus.
