Transsiberian (2008)

Remember the good old days of thrillers that took place on a train? It’s such a ripe setting to create suspense, as films like Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes and Sidney Lumet’s Murder on the Orient Express have proven. It seems like in modern times though, with so many people opting to travel by their personal cars or planes, the genre has suffered. In recent memory, films that mainly take place on a train have been quite scarce, if not altogether absent. Director Brad Anderson looks to change that however with his latest film, Transsiberian, which travels through some of the seedier locales of Russia, picking up some trouble along the way.

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Roy (Woody Harrelson) and Jessie (Emily Mortimer), a married couple from the US, are traveling through Russia on a mission from their church to help poverty-stricken children. Roy also believes this to be good for their marriage, which has been on the downslide lately, mostly due to their different personalities. While on the train, they become friends with their cabin mates, Carlos (Eduardo Noriega) and Abby (Kate Mara), a young couple who are travelling from Japan where they were teaching English classes. To make some money on their travels, they sell various trinkets and crafts, and on this trip they’re loaded up with Russian Matryoshka figurines.

All is going well until they make a stop at one of the various train stations on their route. There, Roy ends up getting left behind, and Jessie, along with Carlos and Abby, wait at the next train station until the train travelling behind them arrives so they can reunite with Roy. At the hotel they end up staying at, cops are making drug busts, and Carlos and Abby begin to act suspiciously. Meanwhile, Roy meets up with Detective Grinko (Ben Kingsley), who begins telling him that the Transsiberian railroad is one of the hottest routes for drug smuggling, and most drug smugglers use young, normal-looking people as “mules” to traffic the drugs on the trains. This causes Roy to wonder if Carlos and Abby are really who they say they are…

One of the best things Transsiberian offers is an air of unpredictability during most of its runtime. Anderson acts like some expert magician, having you believe the film is going in one direction, while it actually ends up veering off into territory you wouldn’t have guessed 5 minutes earlier. Because of this, the mystery for the most part is very well orchestrated. Anderson further breathes new life into the genre by having characters come in and out of the narrative at different points throughout the film. Generally in this style of film, you have a large cast of characters on a train, trouble begins, and we’re all along for the ride. Here, many major events happen at the stops, where characters get dropped off, get left behind, or show back up. It keeps the viewer wondering when, or if, a character will show up again, and what they’ve been doing while off of the train.

This device however doesn’t stop the film from creating that claustrophobic atmosphere that other films of this ilk have. When the action is taking place on the train, there are some appropriately tense scenes. Also adding to the tension is that Roy and Jessie are basically “fish out of water”. Many of the passengers on board don’t speak English, and because of this act in ways they don’t quite understand, which always lends a suitably uneasiness to the film. Helping matters along even more are some great performances from everyone on board. Woody Harrelson and Ben Kingsley are in top form here, playing off one another wonderfully, and Emily Mortimer is excellent as Jessie, in a role that ends up being the real focus of the film. It’s pretty nice to have the female end up being the centerpiece of the film by the end, and Mortimer is more than capable of handling the job.

Sadly, Transsiberian does derail in a couple of spots. The unpredictability of the film starts to lose steam during the final act, when you can begin to see exactly where this train is going. It’s a bit unfortunate, because it really feels like you’re flying by your coattails for most of the film, only to find out the final destination was pretty much pre-determined. This isn’t to say it’s bad, because it isn’t. It just feels like somewhat of a letdown when everything else succeeded in being quite unexpected. I also felt the role of Abby was played all wrong. It’s fine to make you, the viewer, think someone is suspect by their actions. However, when the characters in the film, namely Jessie, think that Abby is a “good girl” once the shit hits the fan even though it’s apparent to everyone watching that she’s been acting more suspicious than anyone else in the film comes off as a little naïve. It comes off even worse when we find out Jessie has a bit of a shady past, so these are things she should have clearly seen. Roy was always played up as the naïve member of the party, so if anyone would be so insistent that this girl is innocent, regardless of her fidgety and suspicious actions, it should have been him. Lastly, I felt the film lost a touch of suspense in its final act due to trying to be a bit too “Hollywood” in its execution.

At the end of the day though, Brad Anderson has crafted a very competent suspense film, one that may be his most mainstream to date. That’s not completely a bad thing, however. Sure, it does rely on a few tired conventions in the final act, but it still has enough of that bleak and rebellious atmosphere of his previous couple films to please fans of those works, and at the same time will likely attract casual viewers as well. People usually enjoy films where American’s end up in a foreign country and screwed up stuff starts happening to them, and thankfully this time, they’ll get a good and mostly fresh film out of the formula. So hop on, and enjoy the ride.

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