Friday, August 15, 2008
MOVIES: Mystery lurks in 'Transsiberian'
"Transsiberian" proves there's still plenty of mischief to be made by throwing strangers together on a train.
Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer ("Lars and the Real Girl") star as Roy and Jessie, an American couple traveling to Moscow on the Trans-Siberian express. They've just wrapped a humanitarian relief project in China, and they're eager for the adventure a train ride between Beijing and Moscow might bring.
This isn't the first movie in which characters should be more careful about what they wish for.
Roy and Jessie end up sharing a train car with a handsome young couple, Carlos and Abby (Eduardo Noriega, Kate Mara). The foursome have little in common, but they bond over cigarettes, alcohol and shared isolation.
It's a long ride through some very barren terrain.
The trip goes well until Roy gets separated from the group during a stopover. Carlos' friendly demeanor toward Jessie takes a decidedly sexual turn, and Abby's dark past gives Jessie pause about her intentions.
The audience is a good three steps ahead of Jessie, a suspicion built with care by director-co-writer Brad Anderson and an ominous score.
In Jessie's defense, she's distracted by a renewed faith in her fellow man courtesy of her humanitarian work. She's also thinking more about her marriage than whether the other couple's stories pass the smell test.
Any other traveler would quickly see the neon warning signs lit by this duo.
Shot in Lithuania, Spain and China, "Transsiberian" offers bleak but beautiful landscapes that set this train-bound mystery apart from its predecessors. So, too, do the film's interlocking pieces, which adhere to a strict sense of logic even as the story hustles toward its conclusion.
Because few films today get by without an appearance by Sir Ben Kingsley, the Oscar winner turns up here as a Moscow detective searching the train for drug smugglers.
Mr. Harrelson rose to fame as the naive barkeep in "Cheers," and his Roy is a smart upgrade on that character's aw shucks persona. Miss Mortimer's Jessie, on the other hand, is a recovering "bad girl," one smart enough to marry a man who just might set her straight. She isn't convincing in Jessie's skin at first, but as her curiosity about Carlos intensifies, so does her performance.
Mr. Anderson continues to show enviable range in his film projects. "Next Stop Wonderland" (1998) revealed his knack for creating intimate human dramas, while his 2004 chiller "The Machinist" offered a claustrophobic peek at one man's spiral into insanity.
"Transsiberian" provides a more conventional, deeply gratifying thrill ride.
Studios and critics alike routinely label film mysteries as "Hitchcockian," often with little merit. "Transsiberian," with its expertly crafted twists and turns, can proudly wear such a label.
★★★
TITLE: "Transsiberian"
RATING: R (Adult language, sexual situations, images of torture and mature themes)
CREDITS: Directed by Brad Anderson. Written by Mr. Anderson and Will Conroy. Original music by Alfonso Vilallonga.
RUNNING TIME: 111 minutes
WEB SITE: www.firstlookstudios.com/films/transsiberian/
MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS