Transsiberian

Brad Anderson directed a surprisingly good horror film a couple of years back called Session 9, a film I thank Wretched Genius for recommending. Its a real shame because Transsiberian is not a surprisingly good thriller. Its a bland, uninteresting work with little going for it other than its setting and it circles down to absurdity very quickly.

Roy (Woody Harrelson) and Jessie (Emily Mortimer) are Christian missionaries who have just finished work in China and are taking the train across Siberia to Moscow before taking a plane back to the States. They meet and befriend another couple Abby (Kate Mara) and Carlos (Eduardo Noriega). Soon it is realized that Carlos and Abby might be drug smugglers and things become interesting when Ben Kingsley's Russian detective appears on the train.

Problem one is up front right away. Not one of the actors (some of them fairly reliable) seems appropriately cast. Kingsley has a bizarre accent and seems out of place. Mortimer's Jessie doesn't act at all like a reformed bad girl for most of the movie. Only Harrelson comes even close to pulling off his limited dimension character and he still misses.

Second is the increasingly stupid plot which relies on thinly veiled attempts to trick the audience for no real reason. And then on occasion random chance that prevents characters from discovering important evidence. All this rounding out to a out right silly ending that made me glad someone else paid for my ticket to the theater.