Man on the Train (2011)

Best movie of this year hands down!

As Good As It Gets

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Blistering performances.

Is it a quasi morality play? A screen writing exercise in how to mire an audience in empty exposition? A "page 40 problem?" An experiment in shallow focus and shallow characters? Maybe they just couldn't figure out how to end it? Was it a bad investment? A satire of a drama? Wait. It's not worth the time to wonder.Consider this short opinion a gentle warning. Larry Mullen Jr., Donald Sutherland, and Graham Greene are the only three positives in The Man on the Train--although I can't imagine what they saw in the script, if there was a script. I regret that I'll never have that hour, 40 minutes, and 10 seconds of my life back.

Donald Sutherland is a retired professor of poetry living alone in a large Victorian house, listening to Schubert in most of his spare time. He meets a stranger, played by Larry Mullen, Jr.(yes, it is the drummer of the Irish rock band U2), a criminal type who is the complete opposite of the professor.Mr. Mullen can definitely give up his day job, he is the cinematic acting discovery of the year. His style is that of James Dean in "Rebel Without A Cause" or Martin Sheen in "Badlands," and he matches the veteran Sutherland in scene after scene. The two are terrific together. Mullen possesses a natural, charismatic charm.A major problem is the soundtrack, which frequently features a piano in the background at a volume clashing with the actors' lines; at times I was wishing for subtitles.The professor and the stranger with no name ponder each others lives, contemplating the paths they have chosen, a universal theme we can all relate to. The two leads keep it moving along and make it worthwhile.

Donald Sutherland, accomplished actor, co-stars with Larry Mullen, Jr., neophyte actor, to complete a re-make of the French film L'homme Du Train from 2002. Not having seen the original, I cannot compare the two films. I can, however, tell you that this 2011 version is wonderful!Donald Sutherland plays an optimistic, always friendly, if not a little quirky, professor in a small town named Orangeville located in Anywhere, North America. It's a small, trusting town which, with its lack of security, invites a criminal and his thugs to town to rob the bank. The bank robber is played by Larry Mullen, Jr., of U2 fame. He's quietly mysterious and is welcomed as the house guest of the professor. These two men couldn't be any more of polar opposites. Despite their differences, the two seem to admire one another and become friends over the subsequent days prior to the bank robbery and the professor's upcoming surgery. I was continually trying to figure out what the professor knew and why he had befriended this obvious ne'er-do-well. Only in the end, was I able to figure this out. Both Sutherland and Mullen were superb. The story line had me hooked from the beginning and constantly reeled me in until the credits rolled.I loved this movie. The two main characters were realistically portrayed and I rooted for each of them. The story, direction, and acting were wonderful. Sutherland continually giving quality performances and Mullen giving us a successful first! This sweet and charming movie is well worth seeing!

The concept is interesting... a mysterious man shows up on a train and strikes up an unlikely friendship with a lonely old retired professor. He starts to case a bank for a heist, and you begin to think that maybe the professor is in on it.But then the film just bogs down. The slow pace must be intended to convey depth and ponderous sentiment, but instead it just ends up being boring. For a movie about a bank heist, there's almost no tension, just a lot of long pauses and close ups of Donald Sutherland and Larry Mullen Jr. And maybe I'm just dense, but I have no idea what happened at the end - is that the point? There are countless hidden references to literature that I must be missing, but it just isn't worth the effort. Not to mention the terribly inaccurate portrayal of surgery - they could at least have gotten the anesthesia right, and no hospital in the world would respond to a code that way. Bummer... I was hoping I'd discovered a sleeper gem.