TransSiberian (2008)

TransSiberian arrives from 2008, a year when a thriller could still be simply a thriller. An American couple, fresh from a Christian mission in China, board the Trans-Siberian Railway and descend into smuggling, betrayal, and a killing in the woods. Brad Anderson directs with patience and cold air. The snow does not symbolize anything. It is snow, falling on people who have made poor decisions.

The cast is a European patchwork assembled for the plausibility of an international train, not for any representational ledger: an American, a Spaniard, a Brit playing a Russian, a Frenchman in the dining car. Emily Mortimer's Jessie is the center of gravity, and she commits the film's central act of violence, and the screenplay never pauses to convert this into a statement about women. She killed a man because he was attacking her. The film lets the fact sit there, unadorned. Ben Kingsley's corrupt narcotics officer moves through a moral fog where the police and the criminals share a payroll. The movie has no interest in explaining wealth, power, or history. It wants to know whether Jessie will get off the train.

There is no messaging here, no sermon, no moment where a character turns to the camera and instructs us on how to live. The film's only agenda is suspense, pursued with a single-mindedness that now reads as antique. We classify it, as is our duty, and find the ledger empty. Every column sits at zero. This is not a failing. It is a description. The film asks for our attention and nothing else, which in this line of work is a rare and almost restful thing.

Thematic tags: none apply. It is not an Oscar winner, not a sequel, not a remake, not a true story, not a book adaptation, not a superhero property, and it never reached number one at the domestic box office. It is only itself, which will have to suffice.