Night Train (2009)

Directed by: Brian M. King | 83 minutes | action, thriller, crime | Actors: Danny Glover, Leelee Sobieski, Steve Zahn, Matthias Schweighöfer, Takatsuna Mukai, Togo Igawa, Richard O’Brien, Jo Marr, Constantine Gregory, Harry Anichkin, Geoff Bell, Luca Bercovici, Marianne Stanicheva, Dessi Morales, Yana Atanasova Popova

It’s not going well for Steve Zahn and Leelee Sobieski either. While the two were chased by a murderous trucker during their car ride in ‘Joy Ride’, in ‘Night Train’ they discover that public transport offers no solace when it comes to safe travel. If only their characters had learned lessons from films like ‘Shallow Grave’ and ‘A Simple Plan’, they would have known that there is always a black edge to a treasure that just falls into your lap. Before you know it, things get screaming out of hand and the corpses pile up. And you don’t lose those in a moving train, even if you have a cleaver at your disposal to work them into pieces of manageable size. So there is enough blood in the compartments, but it doesn’t want to be really scary.

There’s very little to ‘Night Train’ anyway. By far the weakest link is the screenplay. On departure, director and screenwriter Brian King seems to be aiming for an old-fashioned film noir or Hitchcockian train thriller, but during the ride it appears that the filmmaker has watched ‘The Twilight Zone’ too often in the past. He introduces a surreal element that adds little to the story and kills credibility. Add to that a trainload of flat, unsympathetic or bizarre characters (including a woman who is so obviously a man that you can hardly call this reveal a spoiler) and you’re left with a film that rumbles to the end without disturbing the viewer. can make a lot of difference.

Danny Glover would wish you a better part in his old age and Steve Zahn (whose character is decked out in one of the saddest ties in movie history) was significantly more comfortable in ‘Joy Ride’. Only Leelee Sobieski knows how to draw attention to herself as a very eager ice bunny. To call ‘Night Train’ a train wreck according to good American custom is going a bit far, but there are plenty of films to be made in which more interesting train murders are committed.