The 2022 action comedy High-speed trainstarring Brad Pitt, zooms in on Netflix this week, but which characters survive the journey’s climax?
The film sees five assassins board a Japanese bullet train bound for Kyoto, only to discover that their seemingly separate missions are mysteriously linked by circumstances beyond their control.
Pitt plays Ladybug, an assassin who suffers from anxiety and considers herself unlucky. Sandra Bullock plays Maria Beetle, while Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Brian Tyree Henry play Tangerine and Lemon, two hapless twin assassins.
Meanwhile, Andrew Koji’s Yuichi Kimura tracks down his son’s attacker, who we later learn is the Prince, played by Joey King.
The prince is the estranged daughter of Yakuza crime lord The White Death (Michael Shannon), and she attempts to blackmail Yuichi into killing The White Death, who Yuichi works for.
High-speed train was directed by David Leitch, the former stuntman who also directed the current version The guy who falls just in time, with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt. Leitch also directed Atomic Blonde And Deadpool 2.
In a three-star review of the film, NME wrote: “When he’s not trying to be Quentin Tarantino or Guy Ritchie, Leitch proves how good he is at being himself.”
“It’s almost impossible not to enjoy every moment Pitt is on screen. By stealing the film with everything we give him (a bottle of water, a bucket hat, automatic toilets, etc.), he is visibly having fun. It’s fortunate for us that at least part of it rubs off.”
Who survives at the end of High-speed train?
As the train begins to spiral out of control in the film’s final act, the Prince managed to restrain Lemon and Yuichi in a bathroom, while Tangerine was killed.
With the Prince and Ladybug remaining, Yuichi’s father, The Elder, boards the train. He informs the Prince that Yuichi’s son, whom she held hostage with a henchman, is now safe with the family.
The Elder explains that he intends to face the White Death himself, as he killed the Elder’s wife while rising to the top of the Yakuza.
Upon arriving in Kyoto, the remaining assassins encounter The White Death, who reveals that he had arranged for them all to be on the train together, with the intention that they would kill each other, given their various links to the death of his wife.
An explosion pushes the characters back onto the train, which collides head-on with another speeding bullet train and crashes into downtown Kyoto. The White Death emerges, having been impaled on the Ancient One’s sword, and as he attempts to kill Ladybug, he is cut down by a weapon that was set to backfire on him by the Prince.
As Ladybug, Yuichi and The Elder remain standing, the Prince threatens to kill them all, but is suddenly hit by a truck. Maria Beetle arrives to pick up Ladybug, who tells him that he no longer believes that he is unlucky, but that everything is subject to fate.
What happens in the end credits scene?
The extra scene reveals that the truck that hit The Prince in the finale was driven by Lemon. He had jumped from the speeding train and landed in the water, before killing his henchmen.
Back on land, he comes across an abandoned truck bearing pictures of lemons and tangerines. In memory of his fallen twin, he commandeers the vehicle and heads to the train wreck. Seeing the Prince, who killed Tangerine, he steps on the accelerator as he heads towards her.
