Transsiberian

I saw this movie in Los Angeles and was plesently surprised. This movie had me glued to my seat until the credits rolled. Anderson clearly has created a mystery masterpiece telling the story of a clueless couple, Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer, stuck on a cross country train ride through the grim backdrop of a post-soviet Russia. The two are caught in a whirlwind of drug-smuggling, torture and crooked cops. I haven't been this impressed with a movie for a long time and can't wait to buy this sucker on DVD disc!

This one grabbed my attention when I read about it in the New York Times last month. The article made it sound like it might rival Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train or Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. Well it doesn't. Not even close. Granted it does feature exotic Transsiberian locales from Beijing to Moscow, a train ride full of mystery and suspense, and the work of a set of top-notch actors. Unfortunately, everything that is attractive about this film is derailed by a script that takes one too many unlikely plot turns. So, instead of getting a suspense filled Strangers on a Train or an elegantly paced Murder on the Orient Express, we get just another Hostel or Turistas.

In the beginning there is the thrill that one is about to embark on an exotic journey into an area for the most part uncharted by Hollywood (Siberia), and the film does deliver a few glimpses of China and Russia that entice the eye. And, at first anyway, the characters and their relationships are intriguing enough to grab and hold our attention. Woody Harrelson is always good and here he delivers a fairly convincing performance as "Roy", a christian volunteer doing work with needy children in China. Roy is the typical bleary-eyed American optimist blissfully unaware of his own naivete. The fact that he wears Woodrow Wilson styled bifocals nicely underscores his limited vision of the world. This isn't Oscar stuff by any stretch but naivete is Woody's forte and since this character truly is caring and compassionate and sees only the best in other people he's actually quite likable. Since everyone else in this film is slightly jaded and gaurded and hiding a sketchy past, Roy's optimism and openness and childlike enthusiasm for trains is actually quite refreshing. His openness is at times an asset (he is a people magnet), at other times a liability (his naivete and over-the-top Americanness make him an easy target at home and abroad).

Accompanying Roy on this volunteer trip to China is his wife Jessie (played by the immensely talented and infinitely watchable Emily Mortimer whose previous film appearances include: Match Point, Lars and the Real Girl & Lovely and Amazing). Jessie is an odd match for Roy. She has experienced more of the world than he has and her adventurous, and perhaps dark, past is something that she keeps to herself. That is until Roy and Jessie board the Transsiberian Express and meet fellow travelers Carlos (Eduardo Noriega, best known for his work in the Spanish film Open Your Eyes) and Abby (Kate Mara). Carlos and Abby are seasoned travelers who look like they have seen a lot of the world, and not just the stuff that's in the Lonely Planet travel guide. Though well traveled, they are younger than Roy and Jessie and still full of wanderlust for the world and each other. Being around them reawakens Jessie's own still simmering wanderlust. Reckless and impulsive Carlos awakens her sense of danger and her sensuality (which have remained for the most part dormant during her time with Roy); and unrooted and uncertain Abby reminds her of her own younger and riskier, and as yet unmapped, self. Abby represents that side of herself that Jessie misses but also fears so she feels threatened by but also protective of Abby who is traveling down a lot of the same paths and traveling down them for many of the same reasons that Jessie formerly did. Abby's attraction to Carlos reminds Jessie of her own attractions to such men when she was that age and therefore she has conflicting feelings for Carlos: her younger self wants him, her older self wants him out of the picture. The fact that Jessie has a past and an understanding of many different types of existence makes her an excellent observer of human nature and as a result she takes wonderful pictures. But this avocation, like her relationship with Roy, is also a safe one. It allows her to indulge her interest in the disordered variety of life that she is attracted to but also to maintain a responsible and respectable distance from that world. However, her pictures also provide clues to an undeniable truth about Jessie. In the most memorable scene of the film a detective handles her camera and begins to scan through her photos while she nervously watches knowing the difference between culpability and liberty is only one delete button away. Mortimer does an exceptional job with the role. This character is full of surprises, including self-surprise, every step of the way.

The film could have worked well had it confined itself to developing the personal histories and tracing the evolving relationship dynamics and life trajectories of these four characters as they travel together in close quarters on an exotic train passing through one snowy Siberian locale after another. Instead, the film decides to take a different route and heads off into the usual Hollywood thriller terrain: drug smuggling, torture, murder, trainjacking & smashing etc... In other words, at about the halfway point, the film foregoes character study (and subtlety), and becomes your usual lurid, predictable, and forgettable summer flick.

Don't worry: No spoilers. Transsiberian is an excellent thriller. A reviewer here aptly called it a neo-Hitchcockian film. A train ride in snowy Russia full of menace and suspense. As someone who has taken long train journeys in Russia, I can attest that the movie is quite good in transmitting their feel: from the vodka-lubricated friendly warmth of new acquaintances to the all too common hostile rudeness of train employees. And have no doubts about the suspense itself: the sense of dread and danger builds up gradually from almost nonexistent to just about unbearable. Emily Mortimer is superb as the central character. She has to exhibit a very wide range of emotions and she's absolutely convincing at all stages. Woody Harrelson is cast as Mortimer's husband. He is very credible as a friendly and rather naive Iowan who hasn't done much travel outside the US. He's also a train enthusiast--one of the reasons he's so thrilled about the Transsiberian. His wife is a woman with a wild past who turned her life around after meeting her husband, a committed Christian. They have to share their cabin with a young couple: Kate Mara, a young American, and Eduardo Noriega, a handsome Spaniard. Mortimer and Harrelson soon discover that their younger cabin mates are much better traveled than they are. Although they are friendly, Mortimer senses some mystery in the story of their companions. The last among the main characters is another train passenger, an English-speaking Russian narcotics detective played by Ben Kingsley. As it is often the case, Kingsley's character is both intelligent and intense. If you like suspense films, don't miss this one.

The Trans-Siberian Train crosses a snowy, frozen landscape in this former Soviet country. During a drunken let's-show-our-scars when an old man shows his tattoo, it is one denoting the Gulag, a reminder of the brutality of the Soviet empire. Let no one forget. This tiny foreshadowing, revealed so subtly, is a chilling nod to a perverse, corrupt regime and, for the viewer, sets the tone for the things to come on this train ride.

Woody Harrelson plays Roy, a naif Christian completing a mission trip in China and a long-time train buff who wants to take the Transsiberian for the ride of a lifetime. His wife Jessie (Emily Mortimer) does not mind going with him. Their cabin mates (yikes, cabin mates!), especially Carlos, a Spaniard, oozes mystery and a vague hint of corruption, while his companion Abby, a younger American, exhibits a secretive demeanor. Good guy Roy, a hail-fellow, well-met, makes friends with everyone in the dining car that night, at which time the Gulag experience is outed.

This is Emily Mortimer's movie, which allows her keen talent of facial nuances to dominate. She has a bad girl past and feels real appreciation to Roy for turning her life around. He know her secrets. Sometimes one's past is tested by a turn of events. This turn occurs when Roy intentionally does not get back on the Transsiberian during a short stop. Jessie is left on her own in this vast frozen wasteland and commits a life-changing act.

When they do get back together, Jessie has a secret she does not share with Roy. This secret has wider and wider repercussions, causing greater and greater danger for them. Ben Kingsley, who won an Academy Award for playing the non-violent Gandhi, again shows his chops in this role of a Russian narcotics agent, entering the life of Roy and Jessie.

Carl Jung once described white as "the inscrutable cosmic mystery." Snowstorms, polar bears, icebergs. The frozen and snowy Siberian landscape is like that. What takes place there (in this film) is like that. What makes people commit atrocities is like that.

This is a film worth watching, especially for the acting, for the secrets revealed, for seeing bad boy Woody Harrelson as the only character who is not part of this inscrutable cosmic mystery until he must save them. It is worth seeing Ben Kingsley demonstrate a fascinating character study. But most of all "Transsiberian" is a fine vehicle for the amazing acting of Emily Mortimer, whose character resonates and rebounds from a sobering Siberian experience.

A moody dark tale of the perils of getting mixed with the wrong people, TRANSSIBERIAN is the type of film that sucks you in immediately. It is an examination of the nature of fidelity, truth and gullibility...with a healthy dose of dont talk to strangers thrown in. Roy (Woody Harrelson) and Jessie (Emily Mortimer) have been in the Far East, where Jessie's prowess with a camera has won her honors in helping the plight of children in China. The couple decides to take the long Transsiberian train back to Moscow, eager to see more of the culture of the area. Roy, who back home is an important member of his church and a hardware store owner, as well as a train buff, comes off as highly likeable, sweet, and a little too innocent for his own good. Woody Harrelson plays this type of role well, and is good here. His wife Jessie is a rescued 'bad girl', struggling even now to settle down and not pine for her days of less-than-innocent. They board the train and find themselves co-cabined with a mysterious young couple who even at the outset Jessie is not sure are all they seem.

Carlos (Eduardo Noriega) and Abby (Kate Mara) are hinky from the start, jumpy, a little creepy; and Carlos shows immediate interest in Jessie, which Roy doesn't get and which makes Jessie nervous. Everything comes to a head when, at a station stop, Roy gets left behind. There is so much suggestion in this movie, you are not sure exactly what to think about the fact that he isn't on the train when it starts up again; and you are kept guessing about this, and practically everything else in the movie. Jessie opts to stay at the next stop and wait for Roy to rejoin the train, and Carlos and Abby decide to stay with her, which doesn't exactly make her feel more secure.

The action grows darker and more grim from here, becoming a tangled web of deception, danger, and that impotent desperate feeling of being a foreigner in a place where the rules aren't clear. Everyone in the cast is spot-on; you really believe the fear and dread in Jessie when things transpire that she sees no way out of; you know Inspector Grinko (the always superb Sir Ben Kingsley, doing a great Russian accent here as a corrupt police official) is sizing things up with a glance. Roy slowly comes out of his cloud of sunny complacency to realize that there are things going on that perhaps a smile cannot fix, and that his wife is up to her neck in big problems.

I chanced upon this film, and was riveted from the first moment. You can feel the cold of the Siberian winter, and the helplessness of being a total stranger on a train full of native speakers who aren't always that interested in being polite or helpful. There was not a dull moment in the film, and the action was enhanced by a nuanced score that sends chills down your back at all the right times. Although I felt the ending a bit contrived and improbable, I would recommend this movie completely. Fast paced, intelligent, it will keep you guessing to the end.

Excellent suspense-thriller that keeps you guessing until the very end. The cold and bleak Siberian landscape added to the overall mood. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie.

I can see this over & over! Woody is maturing as a dramatic actor! scenery is magnificent!

This was a pretty neat thriller, it was a very entertaining watch not exactly a five-star masterpiece by any means, but a great ride nonetheless. The Transsiberian Express serves as the backdrop for this story of passengers Roy and Jessie (Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer), an American couple with marital problems who are heading for Moscow after taking part in a church-sponsored event in Beijing, China. On the train they share a carriage with Carlos (Eduardo Noriega), a much-traveled free-spirit and his young girlfriend Abby (Kate Mara). Jessie's wild past is awakened by the allure of Carlos's irresponsible and care-free personality with disastrous results. Ben Kingsley also stars in the film as an old Russian detective and he was excellent in a small but pivotal role. The clever script allows Mortimer to reveal her story in pieces, with each piece revealing itself out to different characters which creates a complex web of relationships. All of the actors had great performances especially Mortimer and Noriega who were both standouts. Director Brad Anderson skillfully extracts these performances, as well as setting the claustrophobic mood of train travel combined with the sometimes confusing and threatening fish-out-of-water feeling that can engulf the overseas traveler. the photography of the country is superbly rendered as the train sweeps through it, it was brilliant showing the vast snowy countryside and mountains which looked gorgeous. Some films transfer brilliantly to high-definition, and the filming of Transsiberian was definitely a treat on the big LCD screen in Blu-ray. In the end Transsiberian boils down to a fairly standard drugs/money heist story, but one with a stunningly beautiful backdrop which also features some excellent acting turns from Harrelson, Mortimer, Ben Kingsley and the others. There are a few moments of poignant insight into modern Russia, which contrast with some scenes of action and brutal violence with abit of melodrama. I definitely recommend this brilliant thriller, check it out if you have the chance.

Two things save Transsiberian: Emily Mortimer and Ben Kingsley. Emily is a great actress (and underrated), and she does her best with this clumsy screenplay making otherwise awkward scenes engaging. She has a very expressive face that conveys subtlety and emotions well without dialogue. This gives her a strong and immensely entertaining screen presence. In other words, she's just a pleasure to watch.

Ben Kingsley it goes without saying is a good actor no matter what part you throw him in. Here his character is ambiguous and he does well keeping you guessing about his motivations and intentions.

The big problem besides the predictable story that goes basically nowhere, is Woody Harrelson's character. He's a stereotypical doof. An oblivious goofball touristy type who has no idea what's happening right in front of his face. Emily (Woody's wife) accidentally gets caught up with shady characters on a trans siberian train, and idiot Woody is so out of it he has no clue. Sometimes she'll have a terrified look on her face, like she just saw five ghosts, and he'll be like:

"Dur are you okay honey?"
"Uh (breathing heavy and looking scared), yeah um I'm fine."
"Oh ok honey dur, hey wanna go walk around town hur hur!"

He doesn't notice the look on her face, that people are after her and want to kill her? That the director and nobody else on the set notices these glaring mistakes is unacceptable. It's hard to take a movie seriously after that. There's another scene that is absolutely ridiculous: Emily walking into the desolate snowy freezing woods with an obvious villain character, well, obvious to everyone watching the movie except Emily of course.

Other than these complaints, Transsiberian is actually watchable and entertaining on occasion. +1 if you're an Emily Mortimer fan like me. Worth a rental.

In 1985 I remember being glued to a tremendous chase movie by ace Japanese director Akira Kurosawa called "Runaway Train" which featured escaped convicts Jon Voight and Eric Roberts on a unmanned out-of-control speeding diesel ploughing its brutish way through the Alaskan wilderness. "Transsiberian" goes for the same canvas - only this time the malevolent monster is ploughing its way through the unforgiving wastes of Russia en route to Beijing in China.

On board the crowded behemoth are Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer as the hapless idealistic religious couple who are befriended by a young set of cute backpackers, the devilishly handsome South American Eduardo Noriega and the strangely silent American Kate Mara. Following close behind is Russian policeman Ben Kingsley and his less-than-decent-to-women sidekick Thomas Kretschmann. You can guess the rest...

Although the naivety of the two principal characters is a little difficult to swallow at times - especially in today's clued-up world - the story chugs along nicely - and at times grimly - from one ditzy disaster to another. Emily Mortimer is fantastic as a woman who grits her teeth and battles to save herself and her marriage to a good man - surrounded by snakes, corrupt authorities, locked doors and blocked toilets. "Transsiberian" also works of course because of the quality of its top principal cast - Kingsley and Harrelson are brilliant as always, but in different ways, and Noriega and Mara are believable delicious eye-candy any man or woman would fall for.

But almost more than the actors is the 'other' character in the movie - the terrain itself and its people. The abandoned churches, the cruddy old train stations, the dense pine forests, the drunk locals singing on the crowded carriages showing off their Gulag war wounds - it's a world you rarely see in cinema nowadays - and therefore brings a freshness to the story that makes it all so mightily watchable. And all of this is told with a backdrop of dread lingering over their every move - the feeling that as an American or a European, if you actually were lost in the wilds of the snowy tundra, then who'd find you? And in the corrupt halls of Russia's infrastructure, who'd even care? A clever angle on an old story.

Trundling its way to a very satisfactory conclusion, Paul Anderson's film must have been a cinematic treat at the local fleapit. My DVD version of it was o.k., but a friend of mine played me the American Blu Ray version which came out in the States last year (it's due Feb 2009 in the UK) and it is gobsmacking to look at - it makes a HUGE difference to your enjoyment of the film. Buy or hire that version - rather than the DVD.

"Transsiberian" is a very entertaining watch - not a five-star masterpiece by any means - but a great ride nonetheless. Highly recommended.