This is yet another one of those films that I feel shows why Hollywood can never be good. They took a risk and did something that isn't the usual cookie-cutter money-maker with a Universal/Icon film release and broke the mold with how you typically expect a USA film to function, did it on a shoestring budget of $15 million, and then almost nobody went to go and see it and it lost nearly $10 million and the box office. I find this sort of result to be very frustrating because it isn't often that Hollywood makes films like this and when it ends up having such poor results financially, it just means that they are going to be even less likely to make them in the future.
Don't get the wrong idea here: This film isn't go see it immediately awesome or anything, it is just not your usual predictable film that Hollywood is so well-known for and in my book that is what makes it good.
This is a thriller film and at least in my opinion has a lot in common with Korean cinema in that it doesn't take the path that you think it is going to and while you can tell that something dreadful is about to happen, the film doesn't lead you by the hand and make it obvious what that is going to be. Because of the direction and the way in which the characters are presented you can see that something bad is definitely going to happen, but even once some of the pieces are given to you, the audience is left guessing right up until the end of the movie. Even when that time comes there isn't a real resolution given and you are left with a feeling of needing to think about the real impacts of the events that took place and the effects that they would have on a person that actually experienced them. In that regard the film is very thought-provoking and this is something that cannot be said about the big money making films that come out of USA for the most part. When you watch some billion dollar making superhero film you are dazzled by the CGI but there isn't really any story there and you also know before you even start watching the film who is going to "win." *TransSiberian" is the opposite of this and this is why I find it to be such a shame that this wonderful 2008 film was basically glanced over by everyone despite the fact that it has both Woody Harrelson and Ben Kingsley in it.
I can't be too specific about any of the plot without giving away key details so if this description sounds vague please know that this is intentional. A key element of truly enjoying a thriller film is for the person watching it to not know anything about the plot. So I will not be spoiling anything here. Just know that I think that if you are like me and are dead tired of the same ol' same ol' coming out of the USA film scene, this is probably going to be a winner of a film for you as well.
Basically, a married couple that has a few issues in their relationship Roy (Harrelson) and Jessie (Emily Mortimer) are departing China after doing humanitarian work for orphaned children with their church. Because of their relationship issues that mostly stem from Roy being a bit "boring" compared to his once thrill-seeking wife, they decide that instead of flying back to the USA that they will take the famed trans-Siberian railway journey all the way through Russia to Moscow before flying back.
Things start out interesting enough and the character development about how Roy means well and is a bit goofy and too trusting and how Emily is a wild child repressing her inner-urges is slowly shown to us through their initial actions on the train rather than having some sort of narration or flashbacks to lazily explain their characters to us.
Roy is a too-trusting goofball who is willing to strike up a conversation with anyone seemingly unaware of the potential dangers that can be involved with starting such conversations where Jessie, who has a bit of a torrid past is a lot less likely to engage because, and again this is not directly stated in the film, she has lived a far more "aggressive" life and knows to be leery of some people. Their combination of attitudes results in them meeting a ton of people and lo' and behold some of those people end up being the wrong kind of people to meet.
This is what leads to the accidental thrilling part of the story and is something that I am going to say almost nothing about because not knowing about this is crucial to someone enjoying this movie.
Ben Kingsley has a supporting role and I think I speak for most of the world when I say that we expect excellence from this man and he deserves all the accolades that he has received. I was particularly impressed with the fact that he speaks Russian in this film and as far as I could tell it isn't faked or overdubbed. I suppose there could be some camera tricks here but unlike Jared Leto in his terrible Japanese movie The Outsider, Kingsley doesn't just say a few words in a foreign language then have the camera be shot over his shoulder so that someone who is a native speaker can do the lines for him, Kingsley says entire paragraphs of dialogue with the camera pointed at him. Unless there is some secret trick here that isn't terribly discernable, Kingsley must have spent a great deal of time actually learning and perfecting his lines in Russian. It was so well done that I was convinced that they had simply found someone who looks like Kingsley that is Russian for the role and wasn't 100% sure that it was him until the ending credits rolled.
The locations that are chosen during this film have a very dark and dreary look and feeling to them both on and off the train and according to reports I have read and heard about regarding the actual Trans-Siberian rail trip, this is a fairly accurate report of what that journey is actually like. The film also does a really good job of showing how difficult it can be to get anything done in a country that you don't understand or know your way around in when almost nobody speaks English. This adds to the feeling of dread when things start to go wrong for the duo.
While the film was well-received by audiences and professional critics alike, it failed to catch on with a widespread audience and was considered a box-office failure. Again, this is such a shame to me because failures like this is why almost any movie is exactly the same coming out of Hollywood, which is really the only film-producing epicenter in the world with the resources to make big-budget films. The budget was so low actually that I was surprised that they were able to convince Harrelson and Kingsley to do the movie at all seeing as how both of them were at the apex of their respective careers back in 2008.
Please note that if you are interested in seeing this film I advise that you don't even watch the trailer below.
Should I watch it?
That trailer gives away far more of the plot than I did in my writeup so if you didn't watch it yet, I would actually suggest that you do not watch it and instead go into the film completely blind. In my mind it would have been a better idea for them to have been considerably more vague than they were when they released that. I guess they felt like they had to hold the hands of Americans in order to convince them to maybe go see it.
This is not a perfect film, but it is a good film and one that I wish big name actors and big studios would make more of. However, seeing as how it produced no money for the producers, that unfortunately will likely continue to not be the case. The film does move a bit slow, so if you require non-stop action, you might get bored a little bit. I encourage you to have a bit of patience and actually take this one in because I really think this film is a "something different" that the world needs more of in their films. It's dark and dreary and the slow burn leads to an emotional ending that can be interpreted a number of ways. IMO this is definitely worth seeing.
