Do you have a pulse? How about brain function? Can you differentiate between basic shapes? Congratulations! If you answered yes to the above questions, you are smarter than director Brad Anderson gives you credit for. Brad Anderson made his new film, Transsiberian, under the assumption that the only people who would go see it are coma victims, dead caterpillars, and the writers of the upcoming Beverly Hills Chihuahua. Considering that he took the most generic plot possible, and did absolutely nothing new or interesting with it, for some reason Anderson still felt the need to treat the audience like the retarded kindergarten class that isn’t allowed to have a pet hamster. Of course, the result is a movie that is not just terrible, not just dreadfully boring, but that makes you wonder: is it possible to rip out my esophagus and then eat it?
Is she scared? Is she masturbating? Nobody knows.
Please, don’t give in to these thoughts just because of Transsiberian. A movie this terrible just isn’t worth it. The story of a married American couple who get into crazy misadventures on a train from China to Russia could have been, at least, funny, but by treating this story with the importance of the second coming of Jesus, any gasp of life has been sucked out of it, and a predictable, melodramatic mess is all that remains. Woody Harrelson’s slack jawed and guffaw-filled imitation of a naïve American is the very definition of grating, and is the perfect example of a character you desperately want to be killed, hopefully in as painful a way as possible. Emily Mortimer’s embarrassing attempt at an American accent does nothing to help her dreadful performance, which consists of a quivering lip and wide eyes as a way of attempting to represent human emotion. Two terrible lead performances set the tone for a movie that fails at everything it attempts to do, except lead me to alcoholism as a way of escaping the pain.
