Once upon a time, Thora Birch was a great hope for acting. She appeared in good films and gave exceptional performances within them both as a superior child actor in the likes of Hocus Pocus and Now And Then and as a young adult in such things as American Beauty and Ghost World. But Thora had a darker side, Thora would also agree to appearances in less edifying material: Dungeons And Dragons, for example, or the film that seems to have warped her career, the truly awful Brit horror The Hole. Now it seems that most of Thora's work is in utility grade Hollywood shockers like Dark Corners, Deadline and Train.
Train is a film hard to like. It seems lazy in its writing, its execution and its performances. It is almost amateurishly shot (with the occasional film school editing trick to add a semblance of style) and the thin and predictable story stretches way past breaking point. Few of the characters are sympathetic and the film seems to have a quite unpleasant xenophobic air to it that is hard to pass off as being unintended.
Something could possibly have been done with the premise (though it's not exactly a winner) had more skilled film-makers been involved. One also wonders if had better film-makers been involved, might Thora Birch actually have given a performance instead of just going through the motions as she (and everyone else) does here.
Not a total turkey, but really not worth wasting your time over.
No comments:
Post a Comment