{"id":287,"date":"2009-01-22T00:07:50","date_gmt":"2009-01-22T05:07:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.regrettablesincerity.com\/test2\/?p=287"},"modified":"2011-11-09T19:33:25","modified_gmt":"2011-11-09T23:33:25","slug":"transsiberian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=287","title":{"rendered":"Transsiberian"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-288\" title=\"transsiberianpic\" src=\"http:\/\/www.regrettablesincerity.com\/test2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/01\/transsiberianpic-300x172.jpg\" alt=\"transsiberianpic\" width=\"300\" height=\"172\" srcset=\"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/01\/transsiberianpic-300x172.jpg 300w, https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/01\/transsiberianpic.jpg 475w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>It is not always a mystery why some films manage to creatively avoid widespread distribution. Brad Anderson\u2019s <em>Transsiberian<\/em>, a mix of travelogue, relationship drama, <em>Runaway Train<\/em>, and Renny Harlin\u2019s hilariously anti-Russian <em>Born American<\/em>, doesn\u2019t fit into a specific category. The movie is well made, has terrific, snowy photography, and its minimal ambitions are an asset. Perhaps it was betrayed by its B-level cast, Woody Harrelson (do you think he has to reserve an extra seat at a restaurant for his various wigs?<!--more--> \u201cI\u2019ll need a seat for myself and a +1\u201d) and the realistically plain looking Emily Mortimer as a couple of churchy Americans do-gooding across Asia. As they train through Russia, they meet two better looking than them backpackers (never trust good looking people in a thriller) and a tense friendship results. The contrivances that follow include Ben Kingsley as a Russian detective, heroin, a deluge of Russian dolls, and my personal favorite visual, bloody snow.<\/p>\n<p>The bloody snow is where the thriller aspects kick in, deflating the paranoid feeling of the first forty-five minutes, which had really gotten that \u201cyou are in a country which controls you\u201d feeling, before settling into drug smuggling nonsense. You\u2019d think that these generic elements would help the movie appeal to a wider audience, but the film is mostly downbeat and depressing, and the action limited. There\u2019s also an unfortunate lack of fighting on top of the moving train, a staple of the genre.<\/p>\n<p>So what exactly went wrong? Nothing in particular, and maybe that\u2019s the issue. It isn\u2019t a great film but it doesn\u2019t pander\u2026 Mostly. A compromised ending that ties everything up and feels tonally wrong with the rest of the film destroys the tension of what had been a far-fetched but tense thriller. One hopes they could have ditched this concession and replaced it with a darker closing note. A nasty kick might have distinguished it from the pack of high visibility DTV titles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is not always a mystery why some films manage to creatively avoid widespread distribution. Brad Anderson\u2019s Transsiberian, a mix of travelogue, relationship drama, Runaway Train, and Renny Harlin\u2019s hilariously anti-Russian Born American, doesn\u2019t fit into a specific category. The movie is well made, has terrific, snowy photography, and its minimal ambitions are an asset. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[5188,3431,3440,3430,3429,1636,3011,527,3437,3426,3432,2485,3428,3436,3439,3441,4600,1641,2280,310,5189,1774,3427,661,3435,1642,3434,3433,3438,779,887],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}