The Bullet Train (1975) on Netflix

NR19752h 32mAction Crime Drama

Tetsuo Okita, a bankrupt former businessman, and two accomplices plant a bomb on the Hikari 109 bullet train. It will detonate if the train drops below 80 km/h, unless the government pays.

Netflix3.4/5
IMDb6.8/102,257 votes
Rotten TomatoesNot available

Trailer

Plot summary

Hikari 109 leaves Tokyo for Hakata with 1,500 passengers aboard. Shortly after departure, railway security head Miyashita receives a call from Tetsuo Okita: a bomb is on the train and will explode if it slows below 80 km/h. A freight train is destroyed by a similar bomb, and Shinkansen director Kuramochi tells conductor Aoki not to slow the train while security staff search the carriages. Passengers grow uneasy during a second search and demand that the train stop. Okita calls again to demand $5 million in an aluminum suitcase, and the Prime Minister prepares the ransom while police hunt for the bombers.

Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Bullet Train (1975)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

Director Junya Sato first tried to cast Bunta Sugawara, but Sugawara refused the film after his wife read the script and told him the train was the star, so appearing in it would do him no good.
Denied help by the Japanese National Railways, Junya Sato's team had a cameraman ride a train and secretly film footage used via blue screen, and had a foreign actor pose as a German train engineer to get into the control room and film it so they could build their own.
Miniature sets were used, and for the scene where two trains pass each other in Hamamatsu the special effects department rented a snorkel camera that cost around a million yen a day.
The 1994 American film Speed was inspired by Runaway Train and The Bullet Train: screenwriter Graham Yost's father, Canadian host Elwy Yost, wrongly believed Runaway Train's train sped out of control because of a bomb, a theme really used in The Bullet Train.
When production asked the Japanese National Railways for help, it objected to the title The Bullet Train's Big Explosion and wanted names like The Bullet Train's Close Call or The Bullet Train Dragnet; Toei refused, and the JNR's slow replies put production a month behind, forcing all-night work in the final week.
Junya Sato had planned to cast Yoshio Harada as the activist Koga, but Harada refused the part, and Kei Yamamoto ended up fitting it perfectly.
Readers of Kinema Junpo voted The Bullet Train the best film of the year, which caused the film to be re-released to Japanese theaters.