Movie Monday #20: Drive

"I don't sit in while you're running it down. I don't carry a gun. I drive."

--Ryan Gosling as Driver, Drive 

When I first saw Drive, it was on my computer screen as a glitchy screener rip that someone posted on BT Junkie.  I'm not proud that I downloaded the movie first, but when all of the rental stores have closed in your town, downloading becomes your renting.  My impression from that first viewing was that the film was a masterpiece, so much so that after it was done, I watched it all over again (something I rarely do).  The 80's-influenced electro-pop soundtrack, the superb acting, and the subtleties in the script made this one of my top ten favorite films of all time.

Recently I finally acquired a Blu-Ray player and a HD-TV and needed a cool movie to test them out on.  I headed down to my local Dollar General and found a DVD copy of Drive for eight bucks.  Knowing that my Blu-Ray would up-convert the anamorphic widescreen print to 1080p, I popped it into the player and sat back with a Sprite and a McChicken to experience this masterpiece again, the way I should have seen it the first time.

Ryan Gosling plays a nameless Hollywood stunt driver who moonlights as a wheelman for crooks.  He also works at a car garage run by Shannon (Bryan Cranston), an overly-friendly guy who has taken "Driver" under his wing and affectionately calls him "kid."  Driver lives in the same apartment building as Irene (Carey Mulligan), a waitress whose Latino husband, Standard (Oscar Isaac), is serving time.  Driver makes quick friends with Irene's son, Benicio, and soon a romance blossoms between Driver and Irene, only to be thwarted by Standard's release from prison.

One night while returning from a drive, Driver spots two rough-looking characters in the parking lot of his building.  Exploring a little, he finds Standard beaten to a pulp and Benicio cowering in fear.  According to Standard, he's behind on protection money he paid some toughs while he was in prison, and every time they come asking, the amount doubles.  They also want him to rob a pawn shop that reportedly has the money that will pay off his debt.  Driver agrees to be Standard's wheelman...but when the heist goes to hell, Driver's life--and everyone else's--falls into jeopardy.

The first thing you'll notice about Drive is its electro-pop soundtrack.  Featuring the likes of Kavinsky, Desire, College, and a mesmerizing number by The Chromatics called "Tick of the Clock," the music just drips coolness.  Add to this the astounding visuals of Los Angeles and Driver cruising the streets at night, and you've got yourself a winning combination.  The musical score by Cliff Martinez (who I've loved since Steven Soderbergh's "Solaris") is an astounding electronic mixture that captures all the moods, emotions, and tragedies of the film perfectly and compliments the electro-pop numbers on an even level.

The second thing you'll notice is Ryan Gosling as "Driver."  This was the first time I'd ever seen him in a film, and I was supremely impressed.  He doesn't say very much, but each line is delivered with the appropriate inflection and meaning, like he was born to play this role.  Sometimes he doesn't say anything at all, and a twist of the head or a shift of the weight sufficed (watch his conversation with Standard in the bathroom for evidence of this), and even that carried the necessary gravity to get the point across.  And even when Gosling had to show Driver's anger, it was also measured and proportioned, like he was holding it all back in case he needed it again.  This is one of the best performances I've seen in modern film, and I can't recommend it enough.

Carey Mulligan plays Irene, Standard's wife and Driver's love interest.  This was the first time I'd ever seen her in a film, and I instantly fell in love with her.  She looks so sweet and innocent, but plays Irene as a woman who's struggling between her duty to her husband and her feelings for Driver.  Bryan Cranston totally owns the role of Shannon, and evokes such sympathy for the character when his plans go down the tubes.  Oscar Isaac fleshes out the role of Standard and even makes you feel sorry for the guy, who gets caught up in circumstances beyond his control.  Ron Perlman, Christina Hendricks, and Albert Brooks round out the cast, but it should be noted here that Albert Brooks turns in one chilling performance as the lead villain, Bernie Rose, proving once again that he can play anybody.

The script by Hossein Amini was refined by director Nicolas Winding Refn after the project was purchased from Universal, where it had sat in development hell for six years.  Both Amini and Refn create something unique--a movie that starts out still and quiet and slowly spirals into chaos.  It's very reminiscent of the 80's crime thrillers Thief and To Live and Die in L.A., which are two of my favorite 80's movies and some of the best crime thrillers I've ever seen.  Director Refn worked with Newton Thomas Sigel as his director of photography, and Sigel captures all of Los Angeles, both day and night, in such beautiful and subtle ways that even florescent lighting in a parking lot looks alluring and vivid.  Add to this the unique production design by Beth Mickle, the superb editing by Mat Newman, and the awesome costume designs by Erin Benach (including Driver's white-and-gold scorpion jacket), and you have yourself a masterpiece.  

Drive was the sleeper hit of 2011, but for me, it's the perfect film.  It has everything I love about movies--drama, romance, cars, crime, and a great soundtrack.  If you love those same elements, then you're going to love "Drive" as well...and don't be surprised if you find yourself cruising around the streets of your town at night, windows down, blasting some electro-pop of your own. 

Movie Monday #16: The Tournament

"Is it my accent or something?"

--Kelly Hu as Lai Lai Zhen, The Tournament

I’m a sucker for an assassin movie due to my formative teenage years being spent watching John Woo’s Hong Kong classics (A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, and Hard Boiled are his three best).  The problem these days is making your average assassin movie interesting enough to pick up off the movie shelf, simply because there are so damn many of them.  I had the pleasure of taking in an assassin film that turned the whole genre into a giant kill-or-be-killed tournament, with plenty of action and thrills to spare.  I’m talking about the Scott Mann film The Tournament.

The story of this film is that every seven years, an unsuspecting town is selected as the battleground for the top thirty assassins in the world.  The challenge is to be the last one standing, winning the large cash prize and the prestige of being the world’s top killer.  The entire contest is viewed through closed-circuit television by a group of mysterious, rich men, who bet on the contestants like a sporting event.  This whole sha-bang is organized by Powers, played to the hilt by Liam Cunningham, a man whose face I’d never seen before but whose voice I’d definitely heard on commercials and from videogame and animation voice-overs.

When the film opens, Joshua Harlowe (Ving Rhames) is participating in the last contest, seven years ago.  He’s out of bullets in his gun, has no other weapons to speak of, and is up against a machine-gun-toting maniac who isn’t taking kindly to Harlowe’s announcement that he’s retiring from the business.  In a bit of trickery, Harlowe pulls off the victory, killing this maniac with some kind of pressurized air gun, blasting his head to pieces.  I should note that this movie is not for the squeamish--there are plenty of body parts and organs flying around and detonating spectacularly.  This may sound like a bad thing, but it really doesn’t detract from the viewing--it adds a dimension of grim reality to the competition that’s about to take place.

Flash-forward seven years, and it’s time for a new tournament.  Enter Lai Lai Zhen (Kelly Hu in a smoking hot role), a Chinese assassin who arrives at her hotel, wakes up the next morning a little groggy from being implanted with a tracking device, and gets a major wake-up call when one of these hitmen attacks her, pretending to be room service.  After some high karate on Lai Lai’s part, she gets her first kill, and she moves up the leader board.

To my surprise, the film proceeds to develop a side story about Father Macavoy (Robert Carlyle), an alcoholic Catholic priest whose faith is a mite weak.  When he enters a diner and has breakfast, one of these ‘contestants’ (the incredible Sebastian Foucan, the inventor of Parcour) enters as well, cuts out his tracking device, and drops it in Father Macavoy’s coffee.  Now, everyone thinks Father Macavoy is that contestant, and this unsuspecting priest has entered the tournament.

Lai Lai Zhen tracks Macavoy down, thinking he’s the Parcour guy, and gets assaulted by a Russian Special Forces maniac who was pulling off incredible martial arts moves without wires.  The only other person I know who has done moves like this without the aid of any apparatus is Matt Mullins (Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight), so this was a welcome surprise.  Lai Lai almost loses this battle, if not for some quick thinking on her part, as she pulls one of the pins on a grenade on the Russian guy’s combat vest (while giving him the finger, no less).

After determining that Father Macavoy is not a willing participant, Lai Lai calls Powers on the emergency line, informing him of this situation.  He sees this as a great betting opportunity for his assembly of mysterious, rich pals and tells her that he’d better start killing, or else he’ll end up dead too...and puts the priest up on the leader board, with the odds of five hundred to one.

Shortly thereafter, Harlowe appears on the grid--seems someone came after him in his Miami home and killed his wife.  He’s come back to the tournament for revenge, because he has information that his wife’s killer is one of the contestants.  So what does he do?  He kills the film’s writer, Nick Rowntree, who cameos for about five or six lines as one of these assassins.  Well, they’re always saying that directors want to kill the writers, so why not do it through the magic of film?

As Harlowe keeps gathering information through each person he kills, Lai Lai and Father Macavoy are in survival mode--she’s trying to keep him alive while avoiding his constant question of “Why are you here?”  When they finally acquire a car, Lai Lai drives as far as she can out of the city, so the tracker won’t be as effective.  Meanwhile, Harlowe has acquired a tanker truck and is following Lai Lai’s tracker.  Everything is set for the final showdown, and what a showdown it is.

It’s pretty clear at this point that I can’t say enough about this movie, because it reminds me of classic 1980’s action films, but done one notch better.  Kelly Hu, as previously mentioned, is absolutely gorgeous (as always) and is smoking hot whether she’s beating the crap out of someone with martial arts or blasting someone with a gun in each hand (which was probably paying homage to John Woo in some way).  Robert Carlyle is perfectly cast as Father Macavoy, a man who has lost his church, his congregation, and his will to live, and finds it all again through the help of Lai Lai.

The only part I didn’t really understand was Ving Rhames as Harlowe.  Rhames plays this part like he’s a guest star in a TV movie, and his part is written in that fashion, even though he should have been the main character.  He seemed distant and out-of-place throughout the entire film, and his talents seem wasted on such a small part as this.

Despite this semi-major flaw in the film, everyone else is also perfectly cast--the hitmen look and sound like hitmen, the bystanders look and sound like bystanders, and the hilarious tech guys who run the closed-circuit cameras sound like total neurotic geeks who should spend more time outside.

The action in this movie is incredible--lots of gunfights, lots of chases, lots of martial arts--and none of it seems forced or just for the sake of having it.  Once you have established the parameters of the world this movie operates in (sort-of a “Pay-Per-View” tournament/sporting event thing), everything else falls into place, and that was a very nice thing to see.

Style-wise, the movie is shot in very drab surroundings with very dark, drab colors, adding to the dark, internal struggles of the three main characters...and let’s just face it, folks--assassins killing each other in a competition every seven years for a cash prize is a pretty dark thing.

The Tournament is a film that delivers on all fronts--action, plot, and characters.  It lays down some commentary about how the world sensationalizes sporting events, and that maybe something like this assassin tourney is where we’re heading.  Luckily, it doesn’t get too bogged down in that and never forgets what it is--a damn good action movie.  If you’re looking for a great action-thriller to add to your collection, then look no further than The Tournament.

Movie Monday #15: P2

I was perusing the shelves of my local Blockbuster Video store (which, sadly, has been closed due to the rise of Redbox and Video on Demand) back in May and spotted the movie on their previously viewed shelf that you're reading about right now--P2, a low-budget horror vehicle featuring a girl trapped in a parking garage with a sadistic security guard on Christmas Eve.

With Halloween two months away, I thought now would be the perfect time to review P2 and let you know that it's one of the few horror movies I actually like.

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 “I know you're just trying to humanize me, Angela, so stop it!  Stop it!"

--Wes Bentley as Thomas, P2

In case you couldn't tell by reading this blog, I'm not a big fan of horror movies.  I think it stems from a childhood fear of Chucky, the sadistic doll from the Child's Play films, and the fact that I have no tolerance for pointless gore.  I do, however, find myself watching a few horror films a year and enjoying them on varying levels.  But there is one that stood out to me above all the others as one of the best experiences I ever had watching a horror flick, and that movie is P2.

P2 (named after the parking garage level it takes place in) starts off simple: Angela (played by Rachel Nichols), a corporate workaholic who is staying late at the office on Christmas Eve, finds that her car is the only one left in the parking garage...and that it won't start.  When Thomas, the overly-friendly security guy (played by Wes Bentley), gives her a jump, the car still doesn't work.  He offers to give her a lift, and even invites her to share Christmas dinner with him in his office, but Angela turns him down and calls a cab.

Unfortunately, Mister Security Guy has locked all the doors in the building, so Angela can't get out to the cab in time before it pulls away.  When she storms down to the garage to have a word with the guy, he turns the lights out on her and forces her into his office...where he drugs her, puts her in a white gown, and forces her to have Christmas dinner with him while she's cuffed to a chair.  Angela, however, is no dummy, and soon devises a way to escape Thomas's clutches (by stabbing him with her dinner fork) and call for help.

But alas, there is no help coming.  This is Christmas Eve, remember?  Angela has to fight her way out, using whatever tools are available, including a fire axe, a crowbar, and Thomas's stun gun, to name a few.  Thomas has a few tools on his side as well, such as filling the garage's elevator with water, using all the security cameras to track Angela down, and unleashing a very nasty Rottweiler that he's named Elvis.  And just when it seems Angela's figured out a way to beat Thomas and escape, Thomas figures out a way to stop her, which leads to a game of chicken in rental cars that will make your jaw drop.

You can say all you want about P2 being one of those low-budget, one-location horror films--it makes great use of its location (the parking garage) and the little nooks and crannies that occupy it.  I've never felt very safe in a parking garage, and after watching P2, I think I know why--they're very creepy when they're empty and dark!  This film plays on that perception and heightens it to the umpteenth level, creating the ultimate "what if" scenario.  The idea is ingenious and it hasn't been done before, so hats off to the creative team for their effort in that department.

The casting for the film couldn't have been better.  Rachel Nichols was perfect for Angela, because she could play both sides of the character--the desperate, frightened corporate employee who just wants a way out...and the kick-ass heroine she becomes when she's finally had enough.  She spends most of this film barefoot and in a cleavage-bearing white dress, which is a real challenge for any actress to take on, and Rachel pulls it off with sympathy and credibility. 

Wes Bentley is the perfect villain as Thomas, a guy who could be the creepy security guard in real life, let alone in P2.  He pretends to be gentle and caring to Angela in the beginning, but once she starts to rebel against his wishes, his psycho side starts coming out, and that's when you're in for a real treat.  Wes also gives us a taste of his funny side as he performs a homage to the Elvis Presley hit "Blue Christmas" while Angela is knocking out his security cameras with the fire axe.

Oleg Savytski performed the production design on this film, and I've become an instant fan of his work.  From the darkened corridors of the parking garage to Thomas's cluttered office and the elevator that Angela nearly drowns in, the design team made a one-location movie seem bigger than it was and made it last longer than the usual ninety-minute runtime.  They didn't do it alone, though--costume designer Ruth Secord came up with the fifteen different dresses that Rachel Nichols wore during shooting; director of photography Maxime Alexandre gave everything the necessary spookiness; and the music by Tomandandy (a composing team I'd never heard of before) blended perfectly into the background and made us feel exactly what we needed to feel at the moments we needed to feel it.

There are some glaring mistakes in P2, though.  One of them has to do with the scene where Thomas floods the garage's elevator with water and Angela presses the up button.  The elevator moves up and takes the water with it.  It looks downright silly, and according to IMDB, elevators are designed to drain the water out through the bottom if such an event occurs.  Two of the smaller mistakes involve the fork that Angela stabs Thomas with (it never stays in the same position) and a scene where a crew member's silhouette is visible on the wall of the rental car area.

One of the other issues with P2 is that it has the dreaded "3 Screenwriter Curse," meaning that three separate writers worked on the script.  In Hollywood, one screenwriter can either be good or bad; two screenwriters (or a two-person writing team) is usually a good bet; but three screenwriters is a recipe for disaster.  Jumper is a good example of this, since it had three screenwriters and was one of the worst movies I saw that year.  A more recent example would be the Sam Worthington vehicle Man on a Ledge, which not only had three screenwriters but was also a one-location film (and played out more like a TV movie than anything else).

Do you get what I mean by the 3 Screenwriter Curse?  Good, because I'm here to tell you that P2 rises above the curse and delivers on all fronts.  The script by Franck Khalfoun (who also directed the film), Alexandre Aja (who produced the film), and Gregory Levasseur (who also produced the film) gave us the perfect setup, the perfect amount of dialogue, and the perfect moments of tension to deliver one of my favorite horror films of all time.  I tend to gravitate toward unique, independent productions, and with P2 being an eight million-dollar parking garage film, I knew I had to see it.  I was not disappointed, and you won't be either...though you might become a little leery of being the only car in the parking garage at night.

Movie Monday #12 -- Risk

“Let me put this in words you can understand--fuck off!”

Bryan Brown as Kreisky, Risk

I am a huge fan of Australian film. The entire industry seems to have crumbled over there lately, which is a huge disappointment, but when I saw Risk peeking out from behind another DVD in the bargain rack at my local grocery store and spotted Bryan Brown’s picture on the front, I figured I’d at least give it a look. When I discovered that it was an Australian film, I bought it without another thought, and that was an easy thing to do because of its low $3.99 price.

Risk starts off slow, centering on the first day of Ben Madigan’s new job as an insurance adjuster. He thinks he’ll be helping people by granting them money they deserve. What he learns is that the insurance company is only out to protect its money and its own interests; the rookies are taught to pay out the minimum amount of money and use any excuse they can to knock the total down as far as it will go.

Ben is really too innocent for this kind of job, but he does have a knack for convincing people that taking the insurance money is the right thing to do--a skill he learns when senior adjuster John Kreisky takes him under his wing in a little “experiment.” Kreisky proposes that Ben will close disputed claims at an eighty percent payout, thereby leaving the company twenty percent and still making them money.

Ben eventually learns that he’s very good at this, but that Kreisky has covered his tracks with this experiment by initiating a scam to rip off the insurance company. While Ben proposes that he isn’t “doing anything wrong,” Kreisky and his lover Louise work out a deal that involves fake insurance claims posing as real ones, and all three of them get paid nicely for it.

Unfortunately, Ben starts to catch wind of an internal investigation in the company about someone absconding with company funds. When the Australian police come in and launch a full-scale investigation, Ben realizes that it’s high time he developed an exit strategy--and what a doozy it is.

Risk showcases the talents of its three main actors to the hilt. Tom Long is perfectly cast as Ben, the innocent adjuster who gets in over his head in this scam and can’t find a way out. Bryan Brown is the perfect manipulator as Kreisky, always steering Ben back on the path he wants Ben to travel on, not the path that Ben knows he should be on. Claudia Karvan is beautiful, sassy, serious, and downright one of the sexiest Australian actresses put to film as Louise, the woman who is seeing both Ben and Kreisky and is headed to Heartbreak City by the end of the film.

The production design by Murray Picknett was the standout element in this film. Everyone is dressed in warm, dark colors, and so are their surroundings. Even the cars are in coordinating colors, so they don’t clash with the amazing wardrobe by Margot Wilson. I have never been very impressed with the “stylized reality” that some films go for, but Risk pulls this off flawlessly and with seemingly no effort.

The music by Don Miller-Robinson reflected the source music used in the film, something that is becoming rare these days. The musical score included a synthesized Hammond organ, which is a sound I just love from the days of 3 Dog Night, and it worked great in this film to compliment the on-screen events and the other songs used to emphasize various key points.

The lighting by Simon Duggan was not fancy or heavily stylized--it was efficient and to the point, illuminating when it had to, and leaving things dark and mysterious when they needed to be. When you’re trying to accomplish “stylized reality,” sometimes the lighting can be too stylized or too real, but Simon got the balance just right for Risk. Hats off to you, mate.

The script by John Armstrong was tight, poignant, and nerve-racking at the tension-grinding moments. There was a strange lack of humor in this film, with the exception of two or three deliberate jokes, which come off as a little out-of-place but nevertheless funny. Other than that little quibble, I have very few complaints about the writing of the film--it was totally spot-on.

The direction by Alan White (a name I’ve heard before from somewhere) was terrific, never calling for any “independent movie-maker shake” shots (i.e. Paul Greengrass’s hand-held gunfight mayhem in the Bourne films). The shots were steady, the camera moved only to emphasize or stylishly capture a certain tense moment, and never lost its sense of pace. This guy knew what he was doing, and it shows.

Overall, Risk is a terrific thriller that ends on a chilling note (I won’t spoil it for you, though). If you’re up for a film that will entertain as well as make you think about the insurance industry in general, then you’re ready to take in the Australian gem Risk.

Movie Monday #10: Night Train

Last Friday I spent some time looking through the bins at Tom's Music Trade for some cheap movies to add to my collection.  One of the movies I ran across was Night Train, M. Brian King's 2008 noir mystery vehicle, which I snagged for $1.99.  The original Blockbuster Video price tag was still on the case, which listed the price as $14.99.  Sure, I got the movie for a song...but was it worth it?

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“Who hasn’t chopped up a corpse from time to time?”

--Steve Zahn as Pete, Night Train

The concept of a movie on a train has been done to death.

There. I said it. I got it off my chest.

But there hasn’t been a movie on a train in a long time, and the genre seems to have disappeared altogether from Hollywood. So when an independent thriller comes along that takes place on a train traveling to nowhere on Christmas Eve, I was intrigued...and now that I’ve seen Night Train, I can say that the genre hasn’t been done like this in a long time.

Miles (Danny Glover) is a veteran train conductor who merely wants to get home to his ailing wife by Christmas morning. At the first stop for his train, a strange man comes on board carrying a Christmas present. He takes a seat in the rear car, where washed-up salesman Pete (Steve Zahn) and pre-med student Chloe (Leelee Sobieski) are trying not to be weirded out by the new guy.

As the train gets under way, Miles stops by the rear car to see the stranger again. It seems the guy didn’t pay for a ticket, but that’s not going to be a problem--he’s dead. As Miles, Pete, and Chloe investigate this incident, Pete opens the Christmas present and finds a small, wooden box inside...and inside the box are five million dollars worth of white diamonds.

Miles thinks they should report the dead man to the authorities. Pete thinks they shouldn’t. Chloe points out that they can dump the stranger’s body from the train and into an upcoming river without anyone being the wiser...and soon, everything starts to snowball out of control as Chloe gets more and more manipulative, Miles starts to regret that he ever found the box, and Pete is too scared to think straight, which all leads to a smashing climax aboard the runaway train.

Danny Glover is someone who, after Lethal Weapon was said and done with, has really supported the independent film community with his work. He gives a performance here that’s as solid as I’ve ever seen from him. Everything about the character of Miles--his gait, his limp, his voice, and the way greed twists at his heart--really made me admire Glover as a terrific actor, and not just a straight man to Mel Gibson.

Leelee Sobieski is something of an enigma to me. I’d only seen her in Joyride before this, and while I thought she was gorgeous and definitely had talent, I didn’t know what else she brought to the table. Miss Sobieski proves that she has the acting chops to compete with some of the best out there in Night Train. Her turn as the manipulative and slightly psychotic Chloe is one of the better and more realistic femme fatale portrayals I’ve seen in recent years, and the more horror-oriented elements of the film played to her strengths quite well. I’ll be looking for more of her work from now on.

Steve Zahn (who co-starred with Sobieski in Joyride) has been redefining himself lately as someone who can take on dramatic roles (see his turn in A Perfect Getaway for evidence of this) as well as comedic ones. His character, Pete, slowly develops over the period of the film into the audience’s guilty conscience, since he’s the one who wants to run away with the box and never come back, and ends up getting killed by his own greed. A good lesson to be learned by anyone who wants to pursue a life of crime, and a lesson well-acted by Steve Zahn.

Writer/director M. Brian King confesses a childhood love for trains in an interview on the DVD, and it shows in every frame of Night Train. The entire movie takes place on the train (say for the last few minutes), and while the exterior train shots were all done with CGI, that didn’t seem to bother me very much--King clearly knew how he wanted his film to look, to sound, and to feel, and he brought every bit of that to the table.

Production Designer John Welbanks is the kind of guy I’d hire if I were making a movie. He had to design a wooden six-car train setup inside a studio in Yugoslavia and get it done on a budget. The results speak for themselves. The train itself looks like an old model that’s ready for retirement. The interior has a 40’s-style wood finish. There are Christmas decorations and twinkle lights everywhere. And the best part of it all was the baggage cart, a cold, wrought-iron place where Chloe “improvises” with how to dispose of the dead stranger. Kudos to John for creating a gorgeous and believable backdrop for the film to take place in.

My only real complaint about the film was the lighting by Christopher Popp. I don’t know if it was a style choice or if it was M. Brian King’s choice, but for the majority of the movie, everything is fully lit, all the time. I realize it takes place on a train, and that trains are fully lit the majority of the time, but a little mood lighting wouldn’t have hurt in certain spots. The only real lighting change was in the baggage cart scenes with the florescent bulbs, which was absolutely gorgeous, but the soft, happy lighting downplayed the dark, noir-like themes going on on-screen. Somebody needed to do their homework on what noir lighting is all about, but as to whose flub it was will remain a mystery.

If you watch Night Train, be prepared for a Hitchcock-like noir thriller that takes an unexpected sci-fi twist, and get ready for lots of other twists along the way too. While it’s not the best film I’ve ever seen, it certainly grabbed my attention with the mystery of the dead man and his mysterious box, and the things the characters do for the box’s contents are believable and keep your interest. If you like your movies a little on the darker side and with a touch of the macabre, then you’ll love Night Train.