Blasting its way to Netflix’s most-watched movies in its first week on the platform, Bullet Train Explosion is an official sequel to a film most fans will not expect, much less know about. Equal parts Speed and Runaway Train, the story concerns a high-speed Japanese train with a bomb planted somewhere inside, with the assailants demanding a 100 billion yen ransom to defuse it. If the authorities do not comply, the train will blow up once it reaches a speed below 100 km/h.
While it’s easy to assume that Bullet Train Explosion is a continuation of the 2022 Brad Pitt action thriller Bullet Train, it’s more related to the obscure 1975 Sonny Chiba film, The Bullet Train. Both movies are recommended for their high concept, breakneck pace, visceral thrills, high dramatic stakes, and complicated infighting between the train passengers and employees during the wild and unpredictable ride.
Bullet Train Explosion
- Release Date
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April 23, 2025
- Runtime
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134 Minutes
- Director
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Shinji Higuchi
- Writers
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Kazuhiro Nakagawa, Norichika Oba
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Tsuyoshi Kusanagi
Takaichi
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What Is ‘Bullet Train’ Explosion About?
50 years after The Bullet Train was released, director Shinji Higuchi injects the same fast pace and high energy into Bullet Train Explosion. The popular Netflix action film involves the Hayabusa 60 (5060B), a high-speed bullet train headed east en route to Hachinohe Station. With several passengers on board, the East Japan Railway Company is contacted by terrorists who claim they’ve planted a bomb somewhere on the train. The terrorists demand that 100 billion yen be paid to defuse the bomb. If the train dips below 100 km/h, the bomb will detonate and kill everyone onboard.
Rather than stipulating JR East pay the ransom, the terrorists order Japanese citizens to pay 1,000 yen apiece. Once the passengers catch wind that a bomb is on board, and they must pay to defuse it, infighting among them complicates matters and stalls a plan of attack. Meanwhile, a youthful train conductor, Non (Chika Matsumoto), vows to keep the train above 100 km/h at all costs despite impending obstacles like bird strikes and competing trains on the same track.
At an exhilarating tempo, the film shifts back and forth between those on the Hayabusa 60, those formulating a plan at JR East headquarters in Tokyo, and several employees on the ground doing all they can to detach train cars and divert the train onto empty tracks to prevent high-speed collisions. As the passengers argue about dividing the ransom payments and various means of defusing the bomb themselves, the bomber is revealed to be onboard, and their murderous motivations are explained.
How ‘Bullet Train Explosion’ Connects to ‘The Bullet Train’
Junya Satō directed The Bullet Train, an equally fast-paced action thriller boasting a nearly identical premise. Instead of the Hayabusa railway line, the story concerns the Hikari 109 high-speed bullet train en route from Hakata to Tokyo with 1,500 passengers on board. Once the train departs, the security chief is contacted by Okita (Ken Takakura), a bankrupt business manager who claims a bomb has been planted on the Hikari 109. Okita demands that $5 million be paid to defuse the bomb and stipulates that the train will explode if it goes under 80 km/h.
While the premise is essentially the same as Bullet Train Explosion, several key differences make The Bullet Train worth boarding. For instance, Okita is revealed as the bomber upfront, rather than unveiling the villain midway. Moreover, Okita is not one of the passengers, and his whereabouts are much harder to pin down. Another crucial difference is that Okita demands that the Japanese government pay the ransom rather than Japanese citizens. By keeping the bomber’s identity shrouded until halfway and mandating that the Japanese citizens pay the ransom, Bullet Train Explosion has more mystery at its center and personal stakes that drive the drama to more harrowing heights than its predecessor.
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However, The Bullet Train has a much stronger and more convincing performance at its center, with the great Sonny Chiba towering over Chika Matsumoto in the key conductor role. Moreover, The Bullet Train lacks phony-looking CGI and utilizes practical FX, making the experience more realistic. Another glaring difference between the two is the cooperation of JR East in Bullet Train Explosion and the lack of the Japanese National Railway’s cooperation (JNR) in The Bullet Train. In the original film, the railway is just as culpable as the bombers and extorters, giving much more complexity to the good-guy vs. bad-guy dynamic.
Yet, regardless of who is responsible and how they are revealed in each film, both deliver incendiary thrills and intense action. In the original, Aoki plays a one-man hero. In the sequel, the passengers and HQ employees must work together to prevent the train from exploding.
The Bullet Train’s International Legacy, Explained
It’s easy for those scrolling on Netflix to see Bullet Train Explosion and assume it connects with the 2022 Brad Pitt action film, Bullet Train, also hosted by Netflix for a time. While it has nothing to do with that film, Bullet Train Explosion‘s predecessor has paved the way for similar stories to flourish. For instance, the 1994 runaway summer blockbuster Speed was inspired by the 1975 Bullet Train, according to screenwriter Graham Yost. Rather than setting the high-concept aboard a fast-traveling train, Speed concerns a metropolitan bus in Los Angeles strapped with a bomb, with the bomber (Dennis Hopper) mandating that the bomb will detonate if and when the train goes below 50 MPH.
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While the Indian films The Burning Train (1980) and Tezz (2012) also adapt the basic Bullet Train premise, it’d be foolish not to mention Unstoppable, the vastly overlooked Tony Scott/Denzel Washington movie released in 2010. Without the necessity of a bomb to drive the dramatic stakes, the true story finds an unmanned freight train accidentally unhooked, picking up immense speed as it heads straight toward a densely populated Pennsylvania city.
It may appear as if we’ve veered off the tracks a bit, but the point here is that the original 1975 Bullet Train deserves recognition for introducing a plot that continues to give audiences visceral thrills. Without it, there would be no Runaway Train, Speed, Unstoppable, or Bullet Train Explosion.
Bullet Train Explosion is available to stream on Netflix
