DVDfever.co.uk - Transsiberian DVD reviewDVDfever.co.uk - Charts, News and Reviews of Blu-rays, DVDs, Games, CDs, Hardware, Laserdiscs, Cinema Films & more
(All Lost Souls, Happy Accidents, The Machinist, Session 9, Transsiberian, TV: Fear Itself, Fringe, Homicide: Life on the Street, The Shield, The Wire)
Producer:
Julio Fernández
Screenplay:
Brad Anderson and Will Conroy
Original Score :
Alfonso Vilallonga
Cast :
Roy: Woody Harrelson
Jessie: Emily Mortimer
Grinko: Ben Kingsley
Abby: Kate Mara
Carlos: Eduardo Noriega
Kolzak: Thomas Kretschmann
Manager Hotel Pushkin: Perlis Vaisieta
Embassy Official: Colin Stinton
Female Train Attendant #1: Visockaite Sonata
Female Train Attendant #2: Larisa Kalpokaite
The Transsiberian is a train that takes a 6-day trip across the old Soviet Union from Beijing to Moscow.
As the film begins, however, we learn that there's been a murder on a Russian boat and some drugs have stolen. Local cop
Grinko (Ben Kingsley is in charge of the investigation, but what has that got to do with the locomotive?
When we join the principal characters of the movie, we find married couple Roy (Woody Harrelson) and Jessie (Emily Mortimer)
are on the trip of a lifetime, despite having their marital difficulties over whether to start a family. She's good at
being snap-happy with her camera while he's great talking to people, so on a packed train they'll have plenty to keep
themselves from talking about the issues that matter. Doesn't sound gripping so far, but bear with me.
Before long, their 4-bed cabin is shared by a couple with about 15 years between them, 20-year-old Abby (Kate Mara)
and Carlos (Eduardo Noriega). Things aren't 100% plain sailing with them either, and it doesn't take a genius to
realise there's an attraction between Carlos fancies Jess. And with Harrelson in his simpleton role, he doesn't twig a
bean either. Soon after, Roy and Jess get separated in Irkutsk following a train stop, but why does Carlos have something
shifty about him?
Beyond that, it really does take a major turn away from anything predictable I might've thought originally. How things
pan out would be to give spoilers so I won't do that, but it is a near-2hr running time that's well worth a watch. That
said, by the time it gets to the end, it sums things up nicely, so - as long as you don't mind a film that gets just
a little bit made once or twice - you will not be left disappointed.
This is more Emily Mortimer's film, but not for the reasons you'll assume from my review so far. However, this movie
shows her at the best I have seen her.
Oddly, the titles for the cast's end credits, which are crammed onto one screen, are all done in the tiniest of fonts.
I'm sat relatively closer than I should to a 37" plasma, so anyone viewing from the normal viewing distance to that, or
the average of a 32" widescreen TV, won't be able to see them at all.
Overall, Transsiberian takes a little bit too long to get going as it sets the scene for the first 20 mins,
albeit necessarily, but after that there are many tension-filled scenes including a gripping 30 minutes in the middle
before things get a little bit daft but, as I said, it is a film that does bring to you a satisfying ending.
And any film that has the song Love Will Keep Us Together is a win for me, ever since The Simpsons used it in
an episode for 'Love Day', especially the opening credits of Get Over It, even though the rest of that particular
film gets rather tedious, particularly in the second half.
The film is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen and looks superb, really bringing the harshness and bitterness
of Siberia to the screen. Occasionally, early on, the picture takes a moment to settle down but as long as you don't
intend to read any of the end credits which just get blurry as they progress, you'll be in for a decent watch. My
viewing experience was helped by watching itupscaled to the plasma screen via an Xbox 360.
There are sound options for Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1, so I chose the latter. It's mostly used for dialogue and
ambience and is fine, but there are occasional moments where it gets to shine but I'll let you discover those. That
said, it's not a blastathon so it doesn't need to shout out at you the whole time.
There are only two extras here, starting with a Making of - with cast and crew interviews (33:57), in letterboxed
16:9, which begins with the director telling us how he took the Transsiberan trip when he was younger which sewed the
seed for the basis for the movie, and then there's a mixture of on-set filming with snippets of cast and crew telling
us bits about the film and their time making it. It's interesting stuff but, weirdly, about 11 mins in, the dialogue
from Emily Mortimer giving her voiceover, goes from sounding normal to sounding like she's in an echo chamber. It's
realllllllllllly weird! Did the makers of this DVD listen to it? Thankfully, it affects no-one else.
This piece really does a great job of telling how they made, for example, the train scenes claustrophobic while showing
how things came together - but I'll say no more about that, again, so I don't spoil anything.
There are subtitles only for a handful of cast/crew, i.e. those that don't speak English, expect for some of Director
of Photography, Xavier Giménez's words, whose dialogue goes along in unsubtitled Spanish, rather like an episode of
Eldorado.
There's also
Deleted Scenes (10:45), some of which serve as extended ones, in letterbox 2.35:1. There's a couple I'd slip back
in (which I can't reveal the contents of here, but they were the second one and one of the very last ones) but I can
see why they were removed for timing purposes as they didn't particularly progress the plot.
Prior to the main menu comes something that should've been left behind in the age of rental video - trailers for forthcoming
DVDs. There's the 'Extras' menu for this sort of things, hence, I'm not going to mention the titles featured here.
Elsewhere on the disc, there are subtitles in English only and there are just 16 chapters to the film, which isn't really enough
as I work on a basis of one every five minutes, plus a separate one for the end of opening and beginning of closing credits.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
DVD: 
The Transsiberian is a train that takes a 6-day trip across the old Soviet Union from Beijing to Moscow.
Beyond that, it really does take a major turn away from anything predictable I might've thought originally. How things
pan out would be to give spoilers so I won't do that, but it is a near-2hr running time that's well worth a watch. That
said, by the time it gets to the end, it sums things up nicely, so - as long as you don't mind a film that gets just
a little bit made once or twice - you will not be left disappointed.
The film is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen and looks superb, really bringing the harshness and bitterness
of Siberia to the screen. Occasionally, early on, the picture takes a moment to settle down but as long as you don't
intend to read any of the end credits which just get blurry as they progress, you'll be in for a decent watch. My
viewing experience was helped by watching itupscaled to the plasma screen via an Xbox 360.
There are sound options for Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1, so I chose the latter. It's mostly used for dialogue and
ambience and is fine, but there are occasional moments where it gets to shine but I'll let you discover those. That
said, it's not a blastathon so it doesn't need to shout out at you the whole time.
