Transsiberian (2008)

User Rating:

6.9/10   

Director:

Brad Anderson

Writers (WGA):

Brad Anderson (written by) &
Will Conroy (written by)

Release Date:

24 October 2008 (Spain)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Mystery | Thriller

Tagline:

Arrive on time.

Plot:

A Trans-Siberian train journey from China to Moscow becomes a thrilling chase of deception and murder when an American couple encounters a mysterious pair of fellow travelers.

Plot Keywords:

Train | Photograph | Train Journey | Murder | American Abroad

Awards:

2 wins & 11 nominations

Cast

Woody Harrelson	...	Roy
Emily Mortimer	...	Jessie
Ben Kingsley	...	Grinko
Kate Mara	...	Abby
Eduardo Noriega	...	Carlos
Thomas Kretschmann	...	Kolzak
Etienne Chicot	...	Frenchman
Mac McDonald	...	Minister
Colin Stinton	...	Embassy Official
Perlis Vaisieta	...	Manager Hotel Pushkin
Mindaugas Papinigis	...	Young Detective
Mindaugas Capas	...	Military Officer
Visockaite Sonata	...	Female Train Attendant #1 (as Sonata Visockaite)
Larisa Kalpokaite	...	Female Train Attendant #2
Valentinas Krulikovskis	...	Young Waiter

MPAA:

Rated R for some violence, including torture and language.

Runtime:

111 min

Country:

UK | Germany | Spain | Lithuania

Language:

English | Russian

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital EX

Certification:

Germany:16 | USA:R | Singapore:NC-16 | Netherlands:16 | Finland:K-15 | UK:15 (cut) | Portugal:M/16 | Australia:MA

Filming Locations:

Lithuanian Film Studios, Vilnius, Lithuania

Company:

Filmax Group

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: While walking to the old church, even though they are in Siberia in the winter, we do not see their breath when they exhale.

Quotes:

Roy: Hold on there Ilya, don't tell me that you miss the USSR? I mean the USSR was a dark evil empire.
Grinko: Maybe so. But then we were people living in the darkness, now we are people dying in the light. Which is better? When it was USSR a man lived until 65 years, now it is 58 years. I know this fact very well, I am 58. In Russia now we say there are only 2 kinds people, those who leave in private jet, and those who leave in coffin.
Jessie: Which are you?
Grinko: I'm too old to leave. Just do my job.

Hollywood view to a kill

My expectations for this movie was that I would get kind of a Agatha Christie story. I don't know if it's the setting in the train or some other factors that contributed to that, but that was what I hoped for after reading the synopsis. And to some extent, the suspense has a classical cut which I enjoyed.

The movie start out fairly slow and it takes a while before the tension builds up. And hands down, they have done that quite well by leaving some things to your own imagination. You have the classical Hitchcock set with suspicious looking people and your heroine all alone in a hostile and unknown environment. Up to this point, the movie is a clear 8 on my scale. Although I don't think they used the full potential of Woody, he still does a great nerd with religious elements.

Unfortunetely it goes downhill from there.

Emily Mortimers character, without giving away the plot, starts to act hysterically. This is what you'd expect from the circumstances but it gets just too much over the top. I found myself actually being annoyed by how stupid they made her in the last quarter of the movie. And I don't know if it's an American thing, but another scene actually made me angry and that's the fact that they, the characters Roy and Jessie, have the stomach to be upset over the fact that the conductor doesn't speak English. What did they expect? They are in the middle of the Far East in between China and Russia. If they wanted people to speak English they should have gone to Disneyland in Florida. Just a stupid and very ignorant part of the script. Speaking of ignorant, the natives that surrounds the pair are also portrayed as rough, stupid and unfriendly and I think that this is the US way to see the rest of the world. Things we don't understand are alien and if everybody doesn't adapt to the US perspective of things they are hostile and stupid.

I've done my fair share of traveling in countries where I didn't know the language, but to my experience people are actually friendly if you stay humble to the task. My point with this is, if you go to a foreign country where the chances are that the culture is very different from your own, don't get upset if you can't have things done in the ways you are used to. Bribes, for instance, are a way of doing business in a lot of places on this earth, and you just have to accept it. It's not right or wrong, just a different way of doing things that has a history going back thousands of years. And as I said, if you can't handle that, stay at home and watch cable instead. When in Rome..

No, I can't feel sorry about that characters just because they are portrayed as lost Americans in a foreign country. They should have done a better research before they set off on an adventure like this. I am getting rather tired of that stereotypical character set.

So, to sum up everything, this movie had great potential and to some degree it lived up to it but since they choose the Hollywood mainstream path to the ending it crash landed before it could reach it's final destination.

Unfortuntately just a 4-5* out of 8* possible.