Review of TransSiberian (2008) by Benny C — 31 Jul 2009

I love the romance of train journeys, and have previously been frightened witless by train-based thriller. Well, I was a child back then. Still, while The Lady Vanishes has left a clear shadow on this film, Transsiberian never quite manages to emulate the tension of that classic, much superior movie. It is not a remake (Flightplan already did that), but it shares a lot of plot elements.

Two American tourists come back from China by train to Moscow. They meet a young couple. Some sexual tensions develop, and someone gets lost, and then things get out of control very quickly. Don't get me wrong, there is some tension in the film. Just not enough. There is some sense of travelling on the film, but agaiin, not enough. As depressing as Into The Wild ultimately was, it had a much better sense of the joy of travelling than this movie.

The main characters don't help. Woody Harrelson plays an uber-Christian train geek who is very friendly to everyone. He never quite goes all Ned Flanders, but he gets close. His wife, the "former bad girl" is a reformed ex-rebellious woman, saved by his religiousness. Oh dear. It is quite difficult liking any of the characters. The young Spanish guy is a bit too smug from the start, his Avril Lavigne lookalike girlfriend is silent almost all the way through. This lack of characters to like is the movie's biggest problem - travelling is an experience of meeting interesting, sometimes like-minded people. In this movie, we meet annoying, often bland people. The writing is to blame for this - I found myself desperate to hear some witty dialogue, see some intriguing characters.

Characters aside, the plot relies very heavily and ham-handedly on coincidences. That, for me, is just not good enough. When things get more tense, Ben Kingsley appears on the scene, but he never quite manages to commandeer the movie away from disappointment.

After The Machinist (which was very good and superbly Hitchcockesque) and Happy Accidents (which stunned me by being surprisingly enjoyable, despite starring always-creepy Vincent d'Onofrio), Transsiberian is a massive disappointment from a director who has shown that he can do much better than this.