Bullet Train Explosion

A film set on a Japanese bullet train. The train is going from Aomori to Tokyo. It is full. A telephone call comes. A voice speaks: there is a bomb under the train and it will go off if the speed drops below a hundred kilometres an hour. A ransom is demanded. The figure is very large and belongs to nobody; it is demanded of the state and the company. From there the film takes place in two places at once. On one side the train. The conductor Kagami is responsible; he has to keep the passengers calm and run the order. On the other the control centre. Engineers at their maps, clearing the line and routing the train around. The problem is arithmetic. The train runs on electricity rather than fuel but the line is finite; at some point it will stop. To buy time all traffic on the line is halted. There is a politician among the passengers. She is managing a crisis and the cameras are always on her. There is an online broadcaster too. He is streaming live and the passengers turn on him. The transfer attempt is the most technical section. Two trains come alongside and try to move passengers across. What the narrative is interested in is not a bomb but a system: its idea is that the crisis is managed not by a hero but by thousands of people working to procedure. Nobody solves it alone. The narrative shows that insistently. A method is proposed for raising the ransom and the public gets involved. Who did it opens at the end and the reason is not personal anger. It was made with the support of the actual railway company. Real trains, real stations and a real control centre were used. The film reworks a Japanese production from 1975, which used the same idea. The running time is a little over two hours. Shinji Higuchi directed. Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, Machiko Ono, Jun Kaname and Non are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes disaster films and procedural tension. Who it is not for: anyone looking for depth of character; the cast is large and nobody gets more than a few scenes.