The new thriller “Transsiberian” has its share of implausible moments, but it gets at least an extra half-star from me just for its mode of transportation: Most of this movie is set on a train.
With nods to classic train thrillers, such as Hitchcock’s “The Lady Vanishes” and “North by Northwest,” “Transsiberian” generates a goodly amount of suspense before it — shall we say — goes off the tracks. The snowy setting is the famed Trans-Siberian train, which our main couple boards in Beijing, en route for Moscow.
They are Roy (Woody Harrelson) and Jessie (Emily Mortimer), whose church group sent them to China for humanitarian work. Roy’s a gee-whiz all-American nerd, but Jessie — whose youth was anything but churchy — smolders with a certain unresolved tension.
They meet a young couple, Carlos (Eduardo Noriega) and Abby (Kate Mara). There is little doubt that the leering Carlos is up to no good, but we will have to cross part of Russia to find out exactly how.
After the stakes are raised, a Russian policeman (Ben Kingsley) joins the ride, a relentless bloodhound straight out of a Dostoyevsky novel, or at least a Hollywood adaptation of a Dostoyevsky novel.
The script, by director Brad Anderson and Will Conroy, keeps these characters in their tightly locked pressure cooker for a good hour or so. I think the movie suddenly tries to go “bigger,” and loses its hold — almost as though the writers got to page 80 and abruptly realized they needed something slam-bang for their finish.
The result is less believability, although if you’ve bought into the premise that far, you might be willing to cut it some slack. Certainly the movie does a skillful job of capturing the cramped quarters on a train and the paranoid feeling that all the people speaking a foreign tongue are vaguely planning something illicit.
Kingsley brings some of his eccentric touches, and Harrelson provides another flawless portrait of a good-natured boob. The film is carried by British actress Emily Mortimer (late of “Redbelt” and “Lars and the Real Girl”), a talented performer who is very good at drawing out the serious aspects of her character, yet never quite as intriguing as a real movie star might be.
So, a mixed bag. But if you’ve got a soft spot for trains and the sinister things that could be lurking on board, it’s at least worth a rental.
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