The Bullet Train (Shinkansen Daibakuha) (1975)

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General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Main Menu Introduction Menu Animation & Audio Gallery-Poster Theatrical Trailer Trailer-Volcano High, Zatoichi 26, Kwaidan Biographies-Cast-Sonny Chiba
Rating
Year Of Production	1975
Running Time	152:13
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (76:47)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Junya Sato
Studio Distributor	Toei Company Madman Entertainment	Starring	Ryunosuke Ono Junya Sato Sonny Chiba Eiji Go Kinya Kitaoji Etsuko Shihomi Takashi Shimura Ken Takakura Tetsuro Tamba Kunie Tanaka Ken Utsui Fumio Watanabe Kei Yamamoto
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	Box	Music	Hachiro Aoyama

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	Japanese Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.30:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	Yes
Subtitles	English	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes, Multinational electronics corporation logo
		Action In or After Credits	No

    A group of extortionists have placed a bomb on board the Bullet Train that travels at 200km/h from Tokyo to Hakata carrying 1,500 passengers. The bomb is activated when the train reaches 80km/h and will be detonated if the speed drops below that. Does this sound familiar to you? Even with the train slowed down to 120km/h, the police and National Railways have only about 8 hours to pay the ransom or catch the criminals.

    This long thriller was the "inspiration" for the main plot device of Jan de Bont's 1994 action thriller Speed, as you might have gathered from the description of the plot. What the earlier film lacks is Keanu Reeves - is this a bad thing? - a crazed villain and over-the-top action sequences as well as the romantic subplot. While more intelligently plotted than Speed, with a storyline and situations that are realistic and believable apart from one Deus ex machina plot device near the end, it still manages to drag multiple clichés into the plot. There's a pregnant woman on the train, a passenger who loses control because of a missed business commitment, a captured member of the gang is being transported on the train, the gang leader has a broken marriage and so on. Even so the movie is engrossing from the start and despite the length never really loses that momentum.

    Inclusion of this title in Eastern Eye's first Sonny Chiba Collection would suggest that he has a prominent part to play in proceedings. Despite being billed second and playing the train's driver, Chiba is practically not in the film after the first thirty minutes. The star is Ken Takakura, who effectively plays the failed businessman turned extortionist. His world-weary expression is perfect for the role, though his motivations for engaging in this criminal activity are never clearly explained. The cast includes plenty of familiar faces in small roles, including Tetsuro Tamba as a police inspector and Takashi Shimura as the head of National Railways. Familiar bit part players also appear, like Kunie Tanaka as a former boss of one of the gang and Saburo Date at the head of the line of people trying to use the phone on the train.

    Overall this is a good and mostly realistic potential disaster movie, sort of like an Airport without the wings, and is the pick of the three films in the Sonny Chiba Collection Volume 1.

Video

    The film is presented in a PAL transfer in an aspect ratio of 2.30:1 and is 16x9 enhanced.

    This is a good transfer though perhaps not quite as good as that given to the other two movies in this set. The transfer is a little soft but still has sufficient detail for this not to be a distraction. Colour is slightly muted. Black levels could have been better, with shadow detail not very good either.

    Film to video artefacts are limited to some occasional edge enhancement and some less frequent low level noise. There are very few film artefacts, with some minor flecking and infrequent frame jumps.

    The disc has the usual yellow subtitles that Eastern Eye favour. Apart from one spelling mistake they are well done. They appear on screen long enough to be read comfortably and all of the dialogue is translated.

    The disc is RSDL-formatted with the layer change well placed at 76:47.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The sole soundtrack is Dolby Digital 2.0 mono, which reflects the original mono configuration.

    I did not notice any serious problems with the audio. There was enough clarity to make the dialogue easy to hear as well as to make the various effects (train noises, explosions and so on) sound adequate, or at least not sound inadequate.

    The score by Hachiro Aoyama is a pretty good one, emphasising the tenseness of the film without drawing excessive attention to itself. The one jarring moment, occurring late in the movie, was when a lengthy excerpt from the Prelude to Act I of Die Meistersinger was used for a critical emotional moment. This seemed quite out of place.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Main Menu Introduction

    A brief introduction with graphics and some Chiba footage, the same as on the other discs in this series.

Menu Animation & Audio

    The music used here is from The Street Fighter's Last Revenge, which is quite catchy and was possibly the theme for that series.

Gallery-Poster

    A collection of posters for films featuring Sonny Chiba.

Theatrical Trailer (1:30)

    A slightly histrionic original Japanese trailer.

Trailer-Volcano High, Zatoichi 26, Kwaidan (8:26)

    Trailers for other Eastern Eye releases.

Biographies-Cast-Sonny Chiba

    The same 3 page biography of the star that appears on each disc in this set.

    The US Region 1 release can be ignored. While it is in the original aspect ratio, it is not 16x9 enhanced and the transfer was made from a well-worn print. If that does not deter you, then the only soundtrack option is an English dub. And if that still doesn't deter you, be warned that the Region 1 version is the cut 115 minute version.

    The UK Region 2 from Optimum seems to be the source for the Region 4, and appears to have the same extras.

    The second film in the Sonny Chiba Collection Volume 1 is the best in the set, though Chiba's role is little more than a glorified cameo.

    The video quality is good.

    The audio quality is good.

    A small selection of extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall