Review of The Girl on the Train (2016) by Pipec — 08 Oct 2016

Tate Taylor's Thriller Is The Best Since "Gone Girl" by David Fincher.

It becomes iterative to affirm that Hollywood is going through a rough creative standstill, proof of this, clearly, endless adaptations of best-sellers, but, does the film guaranteed the same success of the book? In most cases, Yes, it does. Take, for instance, "Fifty Shades of Grey", "Me Before You", "The Light Between Oceans", "Miss Peregrine's Home Peculiar for Children", and even "Nerve" (and of course, from best-seller to blockbuster: "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them"), which, despite do not be masterpieces of modern filmography, have remained strongly for an enviable period of time at the worldwide box office. Now, it is turn of Paula Hawkins and her "Girl on the Train", which reigned in 2015 with an exorbitant 11 million copies and months atop international best-seller lists, therefore, it is not a confidence that long before its official publication, its film rights had already been acquired.

Rachel Watson (Emily Blunt) is a divorced, unstable and dipsomaniac woman (not girl) that takes the same LIRR train every morning, every night, and sits on the same seat, same window, fantasizing to get back into the life she once had. Rachel repeats her routine daily, with her sketchbook, her grey coat, her curious prying eyes and her money to drown in the lethal alcohol. In her routine trip, she observes in detail from the window of the carriage to a "perfect" couple - from the train - a blonde girl named Megan Hipwell (Haley Bennett) and her jealous husband Scott (Luke Evans), who lead a relationship of pure sex, falsehoods and unhappiness. Beside, everything continues as usual, her previous house, with her ex-husband, the big difference is that she is no longer there; Tom (Justin Theroux), the mendacious Tom, lives with a younger girl, taller, sexier, with bigger breasts, Ana (Rebecca Ferguson), the woman who ruined the matrimony of Rachel, disturbed, she idealizes her fantasy like a voyeuristic owl during the ten seconds that the train passes through there. However, the obsessions of Rachel with the idealized couple and her previous marriage bring her - alcoholic - has got off the train and try to confront with the ideal girl, although, disoriented, she falls into a vague and diffuse spiral, of which short glimpses and too many blackouts accompany her the following day in her bedroom, bruised, bloodstained and disoriented again. What happened that Friday? Why was she so beaten? and ... Megan H., her role model, with who supposedly had faced , Is she missing?

Blunt is merely a piece on the perturbing trip, a crucial piece. Emily never will be a disaster, she is professional, profound and tenaciously eloquent as the unhinged Rachel. Her British accent corresponds with context of the story, despite the film has replaced the enviroment of United Kingdom by the atmosphere of the United States, however, still working. The way in which she is capable of transmitting distress and sorrow, while also strength and tenacity is unusual, her performance together with the other women's main role is a huge step towards equality in Hollywood, unusually, they are not the two-dimensional characters. The fast-paced trip begins and ends with Ms. Blunt, nevertheless, other people deserve a round of applause too. No one like Rachel, no one like Blunt.

Inherent loyalty of movie with the book will keep critical readers with eyes glued to the screen, excited with the course of story even knowing the powerful end. Both in the novel and the film, "The Girl on the Train" addresses topics linked to the life of a normal human as infidelity, divorce, alcoholism, male chauvinist, maltreatment, lust and serious dangers of lies that holds each person, then speeds up and hits its true stride, clarifying what happened that afternoon of Friday with Megan , the muddled life of Rachel and the issues of others characters causing a revolution of disproportionate twists and emotions, who said that the excesses are detrimental? Here, they are not.

It is ineluctable, and not exactly is a defect, moreover, it is a colossal compliment. The writing of Hawkins has a connotation with the novel by Gillian Flynn, "Gone Girl" from 2012, therefore, the film also. As well and all, "The Girl on the Train" moves through the same track, but, by distant rails. Fincher unleashed a media boom with "Gone Girl" in 2014 - curiously, in October,- now, Tate Taylor will be who relieves him. The cards of title, its anachronistic structure, its beautiful photography and even its plausible dialogs and instrumental soundtracks has concordances and differences that make it unique.

"The Girl on the Train" is a Hitchcockian ride with a powerful story and an irrefutable potential. Voyeurism, abuses, self-esteem and deadly appearances are combined in Taylor's thriller with such magnetism that once you are on the same train with Rachel, you cannot get off until finished closing credits. One of the most anticipated films of the year is the best thriller since "Gone Girl" in 2014. "The Girl on the Train" is like riding by train for the first time, simply amazing, swift and paralyzing.