Country: United States
Genre: Drama/ Suspense/ Mainstream
Director: Brad Anderson
Year: 2008
Rating: 
TRASH CINEMA HIGHLY RECOMMENDED MOVIE
Nothing in director Brad Anderson’s resume would lead you to believe he’s capable of a superior adult thriller like Transsiberian. Movies that have the patience to invest in character and the curiosity to explore the texture and humanity of an unfamiliar world, such as the former USSR, are an endangered species in a national cinema dominated by remakes of baby boomer television series and increasingly moronic movies based on video games.
Roy (Woody Harrelson) and Jessie (Emily Mortimer) are clearly out of their depth. Roy is a fundamentalist Christian from Ohio, where he runs a hardware store and spends his spare time in the basement futzing around with his model train set. He’s a decent enough guy, but a bit of a rube, with zero knowledge or curiosity about the world beyond his nose, with the possible exception of choo choo trains. He believes that the world is essentially simple, black and white, and being like Jesus is the answer to every challenge in life. Roy’s wife isn’t a whole lot brighter than he is, but she’s a little more worldly, having misspent her youth as an itinerant drifter before she met cute with her future husband.
Roy and Jessie have just finished a missions trip to China, and Roy has the bright idea of taking the Transsiberian from Beijing to Moscow, a six day rail trip. Roy hopes this bit of travel will calm his wife’s restlessness while he indulges his love of choo choo trains.
While on board the Transsiberian, this nice Christian couple is befriended by Carlos (Eduardo Noriega) and Abby (Kate Mara), two young gadabouts. We sense Carlos is up to no good, and there’s talk of drug smuggling. Is Carlos involved?
Nothing much happens in the picture for a good forty five minutes or so, but I wasn’t bored. Director Brad Anderson has an anthropologist’s eye, and the motley assortment of nationalities and social classes on the train, not to mention the dynamics of the interrelationships between the four leads, is fascinating. Somehow, Anderson manages to build a lot of suspense from little more than suggestion. We keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.
When it finally does, things get ugly very quickly with the arrival of two policemen, Grinko (Ben Kingsley) and his less patient sidekick Kolzak (Thomas Kretschmann). By this time, we are fully invested in the fate of the characters, so the relatively modest action scenes that climax the picture pack a nasty wallop.
That’s something that filmmakers seem to have forgotten these days. If you don’t care about the characters or believe in the world that they inhabit, who cares how much crap you blow up? (I’m talking about you, Michael Bay.)
Much of the credit for the success of Transsiberian belongs to the actors, too. Emily Mortimer is a revelation as Jessie, as she registers increasing panic and reveals an extraordinary tendency to dissemble. Eduardo Noriega is charming and alarming in equal measure. Kate Mara is friendly but guarded, which we think reflects her reluctance to involve her new friends with Carlos. Woody Harrelson overplays his characters’ innocence at the beginning of the film, but he develops an interesting resilience and courage to go along with his piety as the going gets tough.
Transsiberian is that rarest of English language films; a character based thriller with a curiosity that extends beyond the boundaries of the United States.
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