- Overview
An L.A. District Attorney attempts to take an unwilling murder witness back to the United States to testify against a top-level mob boss. Frantically attempting to escape two deadly hitmen sent to silence her, they board a Vancouver-bound train only to discover that the killers are onboard with them. For the next 20 hours, as the train hurls through the beautiful but isolated Canadian wilderness, a deadly game of cat and mouse ensues in which their ability to tell friend from foe is a matter of life and death.
- Release Date
21 September 1990
- DirectingPeter Hyams
- Budget
$17,500,000.00
- Revenue
$10,900,000.00
- Stars
Videos
User Reviews
See moreJohn Chard
16 May 2024
Narrow Margins and Wide Loads. Director and writer Peter Hyams took the bold decision to reimage one of the best film noir crime pictures of the 1950s, and all things considered it’s not half bad. Without getting close to the greatness of Richard Fleischer’s 1952 claustrophobic suspenser that is. Having Gene Hackman and Anne Archer heading up your two principal characters is a good foundation. As the district attorney employee and witness to a mob killing respectively, both actors come up trumps for their director as they are thrust into a game of cat and mouse aboard a speeding train. As the Canadian wilderness outside the train’s windows soothes the eyes, the cramped interiors make for good suspense as Hackman plays the calm to Archer’s panic. There’s nothing new here in terms of thriller conventions, and the pitfalls and familiarity of the plot’s ideas keep it from hitting better heights: people still do dumb things – important details are all too quickly swept aside – laws of gravity non existent and etc. But refreshingly Hyams resists the chance to insert a cloying romance, while his staging of suspense scenes are very well handled. But of course he’s got Hackman being as cool as a cucumber. 6.5/10
More Like This
Strangers on a Train
Having met on a train, a smooth-talking psychotic socialite shares his theory on how two complete strangers can get away with murder to an amateur...
See moreBullitt
Senator Walter Chalmers is aiming to take down mob boss Pete Ross with the help of testimony from the criminal's hothead brother Johnny, who is in...
See moreThe 39 Steps
Richard Hanney has a rude awakening when a glamorous female spy falls into his bed - with a knife in her back. Having a bit of trouble explaining...
See moreThe Train
As the Allied forces approach Paris in August 1944, German Colonel Von Waldheim is desperate to take all of France's greatest paintings to Germany....
See moreMurder on the Orient Express
In 1935, when his train is stopped by deep snow, detective Hercule Poirot is called on to solve a murder that occurred in his car the night before.
See moreAnthony Zimmer
François, an ordinary Joe, falls hard for the sublimely beautiful woman who has just picked him up on the train and invited him to spend the...
See moreHalloween H20: 20 Years Later
Two decades after surviving a massacre on October 31, 1978, former baby sitter Laurie Strode finds herself hunted by persistent knife-wielder...
See moreHuman Desire
A Korean War vet returns to his job as a railroad engineer and becomes involved in a sordid affair with a co-worker's wife and murder. Preserved...
See moreEraser
U.S. Marshall John Kruger erases the identities of people enrolled in the Witness Protection Program. His current assignment is to protect Lee...
See moreLast Train to Freo
Two thugs from the Perth suburb of Midland catch the last train to Fremantle. When a young woman boards the train a few stops later, they begin...
See moreBad Boys
Marcus Burnett is a henpecked family man. Mike Lowrey is a footloose and fancy free ladies' man. Both Miami policemen, they have 72 hours to...
See moreThe Pact
After witnessing the killing of his parents, a teenage boy is put in a witness relocation program and sent to a boarding school in Canada to start...
See moreThe Manchurian Candidate
Years after his squad was ambushed during the Gulf War, Major Ben Marco finds himself having terrible nightmares. He begins to doubt that his...
See moreIllusive Tracks
Christmas 1945. In a train from Stockholm to Berlin are a motley collection. It is the failure of the author Gunnar who wants to leave his old life...
See moreThe Client
A street-wise kid, Mark Sway, sees the suicide of Jerome Clifford, a prominent Louisiana lawyer, whose current client is Barry 'The Blade' Muldano,...
See moreDay of the Dead
When a small Colorado town is overrun by the flesh hungry dead, a small group of survivors try to escape in a last ditch effort to stay alive.
See moreBlues in the Night
A struggling band find themselves attached to a fugitive and drawn into a series of old feuds and love affairs, as they try to stay together and...
See moreHiding Out
A very successful stock broker is called to court to testify against a mob boss who was into some inside trading. Andrew Morenski must become Max...
See moreThe Tall Target
A detective tries to prevent the assassination of President-elect Abraham Lincoln during a train ride headed for Washington in 1861.
See moreMurder Is My Beat
Mr. Dean's body is found face down in the fireplace, burned beyond recognition. Nightclub-singer Eden Lane is convicted of the crime. She is...
See more