Last Passenger (2013)

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

good back-story, and good acting

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Several reviewers have described Kara Tointon, the fetching young woman who meets the handsome doctor, Dougray Scott, on the train from London to Hasting as "flirtatious." This is a blot on the character's virtue. True, she invites his attention after discovering he's a widower with a young son and needs a wife, and it's true that she almost forces her phone number on him when they're about to part, and gives him a warm kiss to boot. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. It's not that uncommon. It happens to me every time I take the last train from London to Hastings and I'm not a doctor, not even a graduate of the Technological Institute of Gdansk, as one of the other passengers is.There are six passengers on a train speeding towards destruction at Hastings. A madman we never see has killed the guard, disposed of the engineer, and locked himself inside an impenetrable cabin, intent on suicide and taking the passengers with him. Two passengers die, one of cardiac arrest and the other of gravity, without a drop of blood being seen. So it's not a slasher movie or a horror movie. It's not an action movie either because there is in fact very little in the way of kinetics. Mostly the passengers huddle and try to figure out how to stop the unstoppable train. They bang on doors. They climb outside to uncouple the car but they fail. The viewer is less likely to be thrilled or horrified than gripped by suspense. I mean, when everything seems to fail, what DO you do? But it's a commercial movie and it hits the mark. Dougray Scott is just handsome enough to inspire trust but not envy. It's hard to determine whether Iddo Goldberg, who plays the Polish technician is a "good" guy or a "bad" guy. He misbehaves. He continually drops salvos of F bombs. He looks young but sinister. Worst of all, he smokes in a no-smoking zone.If you want a more ambitious movie, try "Runaway Train," partly written by Kurosawa and directed by Konchalovsky. The obscure but rapid-fire symbolism will have you gasping for breath.

This is certainly not a great movie but it is definitely a decent ride nonetheless. It appears that some people dislike it and gives it one star reviews because it is not the "right" model of train and so on which is a bit unfair to say the least. Someone said that it was boring. Well if your idea of good movies are some Hollywood concoction where a decent script and decent acting is replaced with ridiculous special effects every five minutes then I guess you might feel that way.Personally I would say that this is a decent movie. Not great but decent. It is a low budget one so do not expect great special effects. This movie focuses more on the small group of rather different people trapped on the train and their behaviors and interactions. Regardless of what some people seem to think I think their performance was quite good. The weird business guy could be quite annoying at times though. In what is more typical for British movies than for American ones the suspense builds up rather slowly but I find it well done. I have to admit that this movie was one I just found in the program tableau and picked since there was not much else to watch that night and I did not really expect to be glued to the screen by it. It served its purpose quite well though and it was a good movie for a quiet evening in front of the TV.The thing that irked me the most of this movie was the shoddy ending. I have two gripes with the ending. One, which rather pis..d me off, is that first the lead character cannot jump less than a meter since he hurt his leg but a few minutes later he can make a running start and leap out of a train. That is just so shoddy script writing. The other thing is that even at the end we never get to know anything about the villain. No motive, no nothing. The movie blurb talks about "…a dark plan for everyone aboard". That to me implies a bit more than what we actually got in this movie.Anyway, a decent enough movie for a quiet movie evening.

There is nothing wrong with this movie and it's a darned sight better than many others out there. Good acting, excellent FX (for it's low budget), good suspense, explosions, interesting characters - a love story & a cute kid. What more do people want? I really don't understand the angry hate being thrown at that poor child actor - guys, he's a 7 year old CHILD! ROFL Are you expecting an Oscar- worthy performance? I actually think he did an outstanding job and was very believable unlike many of the Hollywood child-faves who so often come across as way too adult and precocious to convince me. As for all the high-horse comments about the accuracy of certain details - come on... really? Personally I couldn't give a hoot about what trains run where or how railway couplings really work and know nothing about London's train service or how far things are from other things in jolly old England. If you do then congratulations, you know stuff I don't. But it doesn't really matter in the slightest for this movie and viewers like me don't know or care. It's fiction, roll with it, I don't know of any movie that's 100% believable or factual, not even documentaries. Anyway - if you're looking for a light thriller that's well produced and a little different rent it and enjoy. It's not the greatest thriller ever made but it's not a bad little flick.

Scott is no stranger to absolutely atrocious acting performances and here shows why is he is getting close to Danny Dire's crown as the worst actor of his generation. Okay I have a confession to make I have disliked him ever since he did the day of the triffids rehash some years back. Also I watched a bit of Aeon Flux last night.So what of this movie. I was hoping for an unofficial update of Dr Terror's House of Horrors. Freddie Francis's masterpiece from the sixties. No such luck I got to see some turgid nonsense about six passengers on a train but wait, some train driver has decided to go on the rampage.. with six passengers. Another reviewer poured scorn over the train details (agut-65-912139) and I am pouring scorn over the plot and the acting performances.This movie is supposed to be a thriller the first half an hour is trying and failing to show that the characters are human. This section is boring. Then after which a person with a motor cyclist helmet obviously the evil one. Then they are preparing to got to Tunbridge and the train goes through. After which sheer boredom reigns. I have seen speed.Really I could not work out why what should have been such a taught thriller was so boring, then I remembered that I do not like Scott. Well this movie has not convinced that he can act after he hammed it up so much.