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very good movie. reading the user reviews below. Someone called this movie, a movie for people who couldn't stomach Saw and Hostel. WTF? Is this guy a retard. I really enjoyed Hostel and Saw 1(after saw 1 they just go to shit) but i would never even put this movie on the same page as those 2 movies let alone in the same library. This movie is a thriller and not a horror movie, it doesn't even try to be a horror movie. So if you like a good thriller view this film and don't listen to fucking morons who like to compare a movie to another movie every review they do.
A promising but underwhelming mystery/drama about an american couple that run into trouble onboard a train from Beijing to Moscow. It had a good eerie atmosphere sported by some decent twists and turns with a satisfying ending. It had pretty good acting in it but Woody Harrelson was miscast here. It was slow moving until the final act where the thriller part of it kicks in, but even that wasn't huge to me, it needed more action in it or why bother calling it a thriller. I also think it is a tad overrated judging from the reviews it has been getting, trust me it's not that great but it's decent. Overall I will recommend it if you like pretty good mysteries, just don't go in expecting too much from it or you will be disappointed.
Posted By: Protecious at 11:21am, January 27, 2009
User Jacques review of this film is hilarious thanks for making me laugh i needed that, it's not that i thought his review was stupid or badly written he just wrote something i found funny, thanks!
anyways...
I felt this film kept me wondering what was going to happen next and with almost no new films doing that these days that's a hard thing to do anymore, or should i say it's not hard to do but most studios wont touch films like this but i give it credit for sticking to more psychological than blood n guts, ive seen enough blood n guts to last 3 lifetimes, not that i dont like it, but c'mon give me something else for a change, and this film did that.
Point blank: Transsiberian was created for the people who don't have the stomach for Saw and Hostel, and it rips them both off in every single scene. Sure, it disguises itself as "Hitchcockian", and the only reason for that is it rips Hitchcock off as well. Transsiberian was also made for the "fine cinema"-whores, as I like to call them, who sip on fine wine and watch "films" but never "movies". These kind of people would never be caught dead in the "childish, cheap" movies like Hostel and Saw, but praise rip-offs of them such as this. Why do they praise rip-offs like this? Because they're too stuck up in their own ego to realize Transsiberian copies/pastes everything from the movies they call "childish", change absolutely nothing, except add an hour and a half of pointless, boring talking scenes that amount to nothing. People have joked before, if James Wan had added an hour of people sitting in a coffee shop talking into Saw, it would be just as critically acclaimed as Sev7n. And no one realizes how stupid the "if it's boring, it must be fine cinema" argument is. Hopefully after this reveiw, however, I can at least show someone how stupid Transsiberian is.
The movie opens up, flat out, by copying the opening of Hostel: Part 2 scene-for-scene. People on a train, one gets separated, can't understand anyone, the viewer should be feeling tension. Well, I would, if Hostel: Part 2 hadn't done it first and done it better. From there it delves into a hour and a half—yes, I timed it—of nothing but completely pointless talking scenes. Characterizing? Uh, sure, I guess. But the characters are all flat pieces of cardboard who do nothing but drive the plot, so why do I need to sit though characterization that I'm going to forget when the action starts?
There is a major difference between building suspense/atmosphere than just adding pointless scenes for the sake of pointless scenes. Modern directors don't understand that. Ridley Scott understood it when he directed Alien, where the pace was ulta-slow, but cutting a single scene would have been vital to the story or atmosphere. Hitchcock understood this as well. But with Transsiberian—and most other modern slow-paced movies—you could literally remove and hour from the beginning and NOTHING would be missed. Pointless scenes for the sake of pointless scenes. And this is supposed to thrill me?
The plot itself is completely generic when it's finally reviled—in the last 20 minutes. I won't ruin it here, but to say I've seen cartoons with more creative plotlines is an understatement. Scattered throughout in the mean time, however, is countless scenes ripped-off from Saw and Hostel again. Even the Russian detective himself seems to be a look-a-like of Tobin Bell as Jigsaw (not to mention uses his lines), as if the director held a picture of Jigsaw up at his casting and asked for people who looked like him.
The torture in the end, giving this the title of "torture porn" by some, is almost laughable. To be honest, I've seen teenage girls who cut their legs worse than that and they show no more visible signs of pain than if they got a paper cut. Come on, am I really meant to think this is brutal?
Other dishonorable mentions. (1) Pointless flashbacks; as if we're too stupid to understand the kindergarten-level plot. (2) As is a staple of movies like this, they had to have a scene of cheesy male rear nudity. (3) Easily one of the most boring movies ever filmed. (4) As some have mentioned, Jesse's character is so unbelievable it's funny. (5) Near the end, the director realized he was making a "thriller" and nothing thrilling was happening so he added dumb jump scenes that had me laughing out loud.
You know, in the end, I hear people always defend movies like this by saying: "Nothing is original!", but then turn around and in a reveiw for some movie they'll say: "Completely original, like nothing I've ever seen before!" Can't they just be honest with themselves and realize that a movie simply just sucks because it's unoriginal? Among other glaring flaws, unoriginality is Transsiberian's main flaw. It does nothing differently than the other movies just like it. And that's what I describe as a worthless movie: one that was a waste of my time completely. Though Transsiberian is just one in a long list of life-wasters, it's still, on top of it all, one of the worst.
Posted By: thedescent08 at 9:49pm, August 10, 2008
A suspenseful thriller.
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