no thoughts, just vibes: the other side of the coin
vis-à-vis The Lost City

But I do have thoughts.
Reunion of Tatum, Bullock and Pitt within the calendar year but this time Pitt is the front man, as he should be. Though, that’s merely the tip of the ice berg, for this movie is packed with names we all know. Logan Lerman’s moderately significant role, which is mostly spent as a deceased person, incited my eureka moment, which came when the movie subtly nodded to his tenure as Percy Jackson. My girlfriend’s eureka moment arrived when Ryan Reynolds showed up. I’m disappointed, to say the least. Just kidding. She was really looking forward to this one and thought it was really good. I enjoyed it too. While it might have overstayed its welcome, it still left some of its best moments for the concluding minutes, namely a montage involving a water bottle. I must say, I did prefer the second act to the third.

In the final sequence, the train derails and Mr. Pitt is slo-mo soaring through rogue train cars as they tumble down a hill. One other guy in my theatre chuckled at the awesome ridiculousness of it all, and it sparked a thought in my mind.

How cool must it be to be a Brad Pitt? Or, for that matter, any actor who has taken part in numerous larger than life movies with realistic spectacle. Because, don’t these guys kind of get a free ride to experience things any other person never could? Sure, even us non-blockbuster-starring moviegoers are capable of seeing ourselves in a character insofar as we get a slight thrill along with the protagonist, as he faces conflict and fantastic stakes. But Brad actually gets to sit down in a theatre and see his literal self in the center of the most vivid form of storytelling. It has to be a rush. Maybe going through the work of performing dwindles the magic. I can’t know. However, if they can get past that, imagine the rush he, and other actors, would get, if they became wholly immersed in the story, while convincing themselves that it is truly their story.

Brad Pitt, in some indefinite way, through the memory of cinema, whatever that means, has killed nazis and zombies, fought in the Trojan war, participated in complex heists, investigated chilling crime scenes, lived with a bizarre disease that affects aging, and had a wild time on a bullet train. That’s pretty cool.