Susan Granger’s review of “Transsiberian” (First Look Studios)
The Trans-Siberian Railroad is no luxurious Orient Express. Instead, it’s a shoddy train with a surly crew that chugs across the vast, snowy wasteland between Beijing and Moscow, making various stops en route, and within its passenger cars, mystery abounds.
The Hitchcock-like story begins in Vladivostok, where a wily narcotics detective, Ilya Grinko (Ben Kingsley), is summoned aboard a ship to investigate a drug-related murder. Then the scene changes to Beijing, where an American church-sponsored group has just completed a charity mission. Genial, gregarious Roy (Woody Harrelson) and his conflicted, chain-smoking photographer wife Jessie (Emily Mortimer) are participants but, instead of flying home directly, they’ve opted take a trip on the legendary – if rickety – rail line that links East to West. They have marital problems and are trying to work them out. But complications arise when another couple appears to share their cramped sleeping compartment with its narrow, double-decker bunk-beds. Carlos (Eduardo Noriega) is a reckless, seductive Spaniard, while Abby (Kate Mara) is a 20 year-old runaway from Seattle. Over drinks and dinner, their stories unfold. But Jessie’s wary, particularly when Carlos secretly shows her some suspicious Russian ‘nesting dolls’ that he’s smuggling out of the country. Then, at a Siberian stopover in Irkutsk, Roy, a locomotive buff, accidentally misses the train – impelling Jessie, Carlos and Abby, to get off at the next station, Ilinskaya, so he can catch up with them. Choices made during this diversion prove disastrously dangerous.
Writer/director Brad Anderson (“The Machinist,” “Session 9”) makes the most of the ominous suspense as the hapless Americans struggle with the nightmare of perilous post-Soviet bureaucracy. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Transsiberian” is a chilling, compelling 8. Paranoia is right on track in this sinister trapped-on-a-train thriller.
