Directed by veteran filmmaker Shinji Higuchi and starring singer-actor Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, Bullet Train Explosion is the latest lively, highly-charged tentpole title on Netflix‘s Japanese slate. Higuchi has made some of Japan‘s biggest blockbusters, including Shin Godzilla, Shin Ultraman and Attack on Titan.
Bullet Train Explosion follows a ‘shinkansen’ (bullet train) bound for Tokyo, which soon comes under a bomb threat. The bombs on the train will explode if the train slows below 100 kph, leaving the passengers and crew in peril. The film is a reboot of the original 1975 movie The Bullet Train, which inspired the Hollywood blockbuster Speed — with the latter starring Keanu Reeves, Dennis Hopper, and Sandra Bullock.
Amid the high-octane, action-filled sequences, Higuchi’s film also offers up several moral questions about life’s dignity and worth.
“When we make a film, we can do many things,” Higuchi tells Deadline. “We’re like God — we can control the life of the characters and their fate. We can make them die, we can make them live. While these characters may not actually exist in real life, having their fate in our hands, we have a responsibility of making those decisions.”
These lines of philosophical questioning come from a deeply personal place for Higuchi, who went through a turbulent time during adolescence.
“I do think a lot about how these people in the film go through and learn to survive at the end of the day. Because when I was a teenager, I hated this world,” says Higuchi. “But I was interested in living ahead, like I was looking at the future. Maybe even though the situation might be my worst point, I thought about how in a few years, I’ll be grown up and life might be better.”
After high school, Higuchi ended up working in public service, with Japan’s post services, but knew deep down that his calling was in the creative world.
“At my school, they didn’t really allow you to go on a creative path. When you looked at the graduates and alumni, there was this graph chart, and there was no one going into the creative business. Everybody would move on and go to university. I just gave up on those academic paths myself and decided that I would go into public service,” says Higuchi. “I took the public service test, but I felt that my future was not there. That was the first time I asked myself, ‘what is it that I want to do? The answer was, basically, to go into films.”
Growing up, Higuchi was heavily inspired by Ultraman and Godzilla creator Eiji Tsuburaya, as well as George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.
Reading how Spielberg made Jaws while in his twenties, Higuchi was inspired and wanted to do the same.
“I read the news and it was very shocking to know that in America, you can make a film in your twenties,” adds Higuchi. “So when I was in my 20s, I was quite cocky, in a way. The American films from the 1970s still have a big impact on me.”
Higuchi says that he has wanted to make Bullet Train Explosion for nearly 20 years. Besides Kusanagi, the film also stars Kanata Hosoda, Non, Jun Kaname and Machiko Ono.
Casting Kusanagi in Bullet Train Explosion — a former member of SMAP, one of Japan’s most popular boybands from the late 1980s to the early 2000s — took nearly 20 years, partially due to issues with Higuchi’s former management agency. It was only when Netflix arrived in the Japanese content scene, that making the film became a real possibility for Higuchi.
“When you’re making film in Japan, there are limitations and rules that you have to follow,” says Higuchi. “After Tsuyoshi left his old agency management company, we were able to get him, because his old management was very powerful and had a lot of influence on the entertainment industry. Tsuyoshi had rebelled against the boss of the entertainment business and left the company not on good terms. What happened was that a lot of the production companies in Japan were afraid that they might offend the boss by casting him.
“Those who could hire and cast him were only the independent films, who had a lot of freedom and a good vibe,” adds Higuchi. “Then Netflix came around and compared to the TV stations and the film industry which have been in Japan forever, Netflix was able to do something that they weren’t able to do. Netflix was kind of able to leap over that big political game that we had here in the entertainment business. So although we’re not an independent film, we were able to cast him in this big-budget film because it was Netflix.”
Looking ahead, Higuchi wants to focus on making films based on original screenplays, but acknowledges that it is not easy to get such projects funded, compared to adaptations of IP that audiences are already familiar with.
“What’s very challenging about making films here in Japan is not just funding and production companies, but the audiences too, who want something reassuring, something that they know is going to be good,” says Higuchi. “I really want to create an original story, but to be honest, a lot of the things I want to make are going to be high-budget. You need to convince the people who have the money that this is worth the money and investment, and I haven’t been able to do that yet.”
“I just hope that there will be an environment and ecosystem — or even becoming that person myself — that would enable me to make that dream film, because there are only a handful of creators, maybe five, who are able to do that in Japan and stay true to their creative visions.”
Higuchi points out that he has observed that writers transitioning from the theater scene in Japan, to the film industry, are often able to pull the money from investors for big budget movies.
“The writers who come from theater into films, when they write the script, they really make the actors shine,” adds Higuchi. “When you ask them, ‘what is the story?’, they always talk about the character instead of the story. Characters are usually the main impression and takeaways of these films — maybe that might be the appeal.”