Bullet Train: What Makes the White Death Scarier Than Most Movie Gangsters

It is highly unlikely a former member of the Russian mob would rise in the Yakuza, though the two groups occasionally partnered on lucrative true-life gambling operations. But Bullet Train has an ambiguous relationship with things like reality and luck, and likes to stack the odds. The very premise of the film is a long shot based on an incredibly improbable sequence of events, intermingled in such a convoluted way that even a safecracker from the Oceans 11 team couldn’t unlock it. It is a vengeance plot distorted by both known and unforeseen coincidences, mostly unlucky.

The machinations of the caper on the bullet train build from a complicated blueprint. Lerman’s Son is arrested on the eve of being cut loose from family business. In spite of protests, White Death’s wife dies on her way to post bail because her husband is preoccupied by a mass execution of his men in Bolivia by Lemon and Tangerine. The brotherly duo slaughtered 17 men in a span of a few minutes.

The timing of the massacre and the assassination attempt are purely coincidental, because the mastermind behind the crime lord wife’s death, Carver (Ryan Reynolds), was targeting White Death, and The Son was in on it. In another unrelated coincidence, White Death’s wife could have been saved, but the only surgeon with the skill to perform the miracle operation was all-too recently poisoned by a snake-venom-loving assassin called The Hornet (Zazie Beetz). It is a tangled web, but the Yakuza overseer slices his katana through it with ease.

White Death is a gifted multitasker, and knows how to take advantage of the chaotic remnants of ill-timed misfortune. Examining the evidence, White Death blames his wife’s death on The Son, Carver, Lemon, Tangerine, and The Hornet. Their participation is unrelated, but equally unforgivable. White Death sets up one caper which will take care of them all in a single day. He puts them all on the same job of retrieving a briefcase of cash, and his kidnapped Son, on a Japanese bullet train. White Death figures most of the homicidal specialists will kill each other, and he can dispatch whoever is left when the train arrives at its final destination. 

This kind of maneuver requires the cunning of a Michael Corleone, who decapitated the leadership of the rival families in The Godfather, and saved a special seat for his own brother-in-law, right behind the guy with the garotte, the trusted capo Peter Clemenza (Richard S. Castellano). The Son of White Death has a window seat on Japan’s marvel of transportation. The daughter prefers first class, with kitchen privileges.

The Prince, a wild card in her father’s plans, lives up to her Machiavellian moniker. Her scheme to kill her uncaring dad is as much a Rube Goldberg mouse trap as White Death would scheme up. She has Kimura’s son thrown off a roof to assure he seeks revenge on the bullet train. Her clockwork planning includes timed calls to a killer stalking the child’s hospital ward to ensure obedience. Her most brilliant chain-reaction contraptions jerry-rig the silver briefcase to explode upon opening, and rewire a gun using a bit of jewelry.