Transsiberian

Transsiberian is a UK-European co-production and has a distinctly European feel to it and director, Brad Anderson's previous film was the excellently lugubrious The Machinist in 2004. This doesn’t mean that it’s short on suspense but there’s only a small amount of gun-brandishing and action set-pieces. The emphasis is on building suspense by working the ambiguities of the characterisations, cleverly using the context of a long train journey to place its players in a constrained environment.

Emily Mortimer and Woody Harrelson play an American Christian couple, Jessie and Roy, who have finished a stint of compassionate work in Beijing. In order to satisfy his wife’s wanderlust, Roy agrees to a trip to Moscow on the Transsiberian Express, at eight days, the longest train journey in the world. Roy is a hardware store owner and a square peg but Jesse is bit of a bad girl who has reformed her ways. When they meet Carlos (Eduardo Noriega) and Abbey (Kate Mara) a couple of hipster backpackers, Jesse feels the temptation to stray and things start to go off the rails.

No advertisement for budget travel in Russia, Transsiberian effectively works the ordinary-Joes-out-of-their-depth scenario. Harrelson’s God-fearin’ nice guy is a bit too thick for his own good but it makes for an engaging against-type performance and why they needed Ben Kingsley with his “You take, please” accent to play the Russian narcotics detective is anyone's guess although he does menacing quite well. The stand-out performance however is from Emily Mortimer who is, in every sense, central to the film. The the two halves of the film don't quite marry (why does Roy turn up with the Russian detective one asks oneself) and the climax is a tad too contrived but overall this is a consistently convincing and stylish thriller.

DVD Extras: Making-of featurette; Original theatrical trailer.

Available from: Madman

 

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