The Kid Who Would Be King (2019)

10 Sunday Mar 2019

Tags

Adventure, Dean Chaumoo, Drama, Excalibur, Fantasy, Joe Cornish, King Arthur, Louis Ashbourne Serkis, Merlin, Rebecca Ferguson, Review, Tintagel

D: Joe Cornish / 120m

Cast: Louis Ashbourne Serkis, Denise Gough, Dean Chaumoo, Tom Taylor, Rhianna Dorris, Angus Imrie, Rebecca Ferguson, Patrick Stewart, Genevieve O’Reilly

Alexander “Alex” Elliot (Serkis) and his best friend, Bedders (Chaumoo), are twelve year olds with a common problem: they’re being bullied by two older pupils, Lance (Taylor) and Kaye (Dorris), at their school. When Alex finds himself chased by them after school one day, he takes refuge in a nearby building site. There he discovers a sword lodged in a stone pedestal. Alex removes it, and takes it with him: later, he and Bedders learn that the sword is the legendary Excalibur. The next day, a strange new pupil calling himself Mertin (Imrie) arrives at the school and seems very interested in Alex. That night, Alex is attacked by a skeletal creature at his home, and is only saved by Mertin’s intervention. Revealed to be the ancient sorcerer Merlin, “Mertin” explains to Alex that his finding the sword wasn’t an accident, and that King Arthur’s malevolent half-sister, Morgana (Ferguson), long imprisoned within the earth, has grown strong enough to be on the verge of regaining her full powers; it’s down to Alex as Arthur’s true heir, to defeat her and save Britain once again from being plunged into irrevocable darkness…

The release of Joe Cornish’s first movie, Attack the Block (2011), seems like an Arthurian age ago now, and though he’s been busy with other projects in the meantime – most notably the script for Ant-Man (2015), and being in the running to direct Star Trek Beyond (2016) – the wait for his second feature has created a palpable sense of anticipation. Alas, the movie he’s devoted most of his time and energy to, isn’t as rewarding as his first. On the surface it’s a fun children’s movie, a modern day medieval romp replete with swords and chases on horseback, a wicked sorceress, and the fate of the world as we know it in the balance. There are further elements included: bullying, an absentee father for Alex, and the burdens of leadership, and though Cornish throws them all into the mix with the best of intentions, his modern fantasy never fizzes with the necessary invention needed to make it entirely successful. It’s a shame, as The Kid Who Would Be King is a terrific idea in theory, but in practice it stumbles too often, and there are too many narrative lulls that hamper the flow of the material. A trip to Tintagel is a strong case in point, an extended section of the movie that feels like it should be important to the overall story, but which, ultimately, only provides the solution to a minor plot point.

Little about Cornish’s movie feels like it’s working in the way that he envisioned when he set out to make it. Too much feels perfunctory or blandly rendered, and it always feels like it’s having to work harder and harder as it progresses to maintain the audience’s attention. Cornish throws in the odd visual flourish – Morgana’s skeletal army is an asset, the Lady of the Bath, erm, Lake is another – but this is also a movie that betrays its modest studio budget by looking drab for most of the running time, and by allowing the work of its normally reliable DoP Dick Pope to look like it’s been deliberately underlit as a conscious directorial choice. And unfair as this may seem, the young cast aren’t very interesting to watch, their lack of experience leading to some uncomfortable moments when things need to get emotional. Only Imrie is able to inject any energy into his performance, and he does so by somehow managing to play his role both completely straight and with his tongue lodged firmly in his cheek at the same time; when he’s not on screen he’s sorely missed. As a family movie it’s not without a certain degree of likeability, and Cornish adds some solid humour to leaven the serious fantasy aspects, but it’s likely that only children will submit to its charms, while adults may well find it something of a struggle to sit through.

Rating: 5/10 – already likely to lose the studios that bankrolled it around $50 million, The Kid Who Would Be King has a solid basic premise, and Cornish should have been able to use it as the springboard for a truly entertaining magical adventure, but instead it feels listless and inassertive; one to watch when The Goonies (1985) – or even Holes (2003) – isn’t available, this is the first major disappointment of 2019.

The Snowman (2017)

18 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Charlotte Gainsbourg, Crime, Drama, Harry Hole, Jo Nesbø, Literary adaptation, Michael Fassbender, Murder, Rebecca Ferguson, Review, Serial killer, Thriller, Tomas Alfredson

D: Tomas Alfredson / 119m

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Val Kilmer, J.K. Simmons, Toby Jones, David Dencik, Chloë Sevigny, James D’Arcy, Jonas Karlsson, Adrian Dunbar, Ronan Vibert, Michael Yates

Another week, another literary adaptation, another disappointment… Sometimes it’s hard to understand just what happened when a movie based on a well regarded novel hits our screens with all the turgid urgency of dripping sludge. Who do you blame? The director? Maybe. They are in overall charge of how the movie looks and sounds and how thrilling or dramatic or funny or affecting it should be. Or maybe it’s the screenwriter(s). Maybe they didn’t “get” the novel or work out the best way of transferring it to the big screen. Maybe it’s the cast. Maybe they weren’t “feeling it” and couldn’t find their way to putting in good performances. Or perhaps it’s just something a little less tangible, the tone perhaps, or the pacing, or the emotion of the piece. Maybe – maybe – it’s a combination of all these.

That certainly seems to be the case with The Snowman, an adaptation of the novel by Jo Nesbø, and the first movie to feature his troubled detective, Harry Hole (played here by Michael Fassbender in a portrayal that seems based around Hole having only the one expression). Now, if you’ve read this paragraph up til now and you’ve been pronouncing Hole as in a hole in the ground, then you have the first problem that the movie can’t or won’t overcome: no one can even pronounce the lead character’s name correctly. Harry’s surname is pronounced Ho-ly as in holy scripture, or as with this movie, what the holy hell is happening? When the makers of a movie can’t even get the lead character’s name right, then what chance does the rest of the movie have? In short, hardly any chance at all.

A rushed production that finished shooting in April 2016, but which required reshoots in the spring of this year, the movie quickly gets bogged down by the requirements of a muddled script that wants to be regarded as another excellent example of the awkwardly named Scandi-noir. All the elements are there to be ticked off one by one: the dark, brooding lead detective, the dark, brooding atmosphere, the dark, brooding nature of the murders, the killer’s dark, brooding psychological profile, the dark, brooding visual backdrop – clearly if it wasn’t dark and brooding then it wasn’t allowed to remain in the screenplay. But just as having too much of a good thing can spoil that very same thing, having too little in the way of structure, common sense and thrills can also damage a movie’s chances, and The Snowman sabotages its own semi-focused ambitions at every turn.

For a thriller that should grip like a vice, there are just too many risible moments that offer unfortunate injections of humour, such as when James D’Arcy’s character reveals that he’s “infertile. I can’t have children”, just to make sure there’s no one in the audience who won’t understand what infertile means. Then there are the dreadful, logic-takes-a-beating moments such as when the killer uses a mobile phone they know the police will be monitoring to help them pin the blame on someone else, but who then forgets that they can be traced through the use of another mobile phone later on. Scenes come and go that don’t always follow on from each other (though it’s more disheartening to think there might be a longer Director’s Cut out there somewhere), and Harry’s maverick cop activities keep him in the front line no matter how often he acts independently of the rest of the Oslo police force, while Rebecca Ferguson’s impassioned rookie, Katrine, gets sidelined the first time she uses her own initiative. Some of this is in service of the plot, but mostly it just seems that in piecing together the key points of Nesbø’s novel, screenwriters Hossein Amini, Peter Straughan, and Søren Sveistrup have decided to only include the events from every other chapter in the novel, and not adapt the novel as a whole.

Characterisations suffer too as a result of this approach, with Harry’s alcoholism only of any relevance in introducing him to the audience, and to provide a degree of drama surrounding his continual inability to spend time with the son (Yates) of his old flame, Rakel (Gainsbourg). Being an alcoholic isn’t allowed to get in the way of showing just how good a detective Harry really is, and so it becomes less and less effective as a character defect the longer the movie goes on. Likewise the relationship between Harry and Rakel is confusing because there’s no back story for the viewer to latch onto (it might have helped if the producers had decided to adapt the first book in the Harry Hole series, instead of the seventh). The killer’s motives remain vague and unconvincing throughout, and their need to build a snowman at the scene of each crime is as baffling at the end as it is at the beginning. It’s as if it’s use as a signature “flourish” by the killer is all that’s needed. (A reason for it? Ah, don’t worry about it; it’ll look cool.)

Alfredson has spoken about the challenges of making the movie within a short period of time, and without a completed script, leading to issues that were discovered in the editing suite. But while it does seem that there are huge gaps in the narrative, and the movie has to work extra hard to maintain any tension or sense of urgency, it’s the flatness of the drama and the lethargy in certain scenes that can’t be explained away just because of a shortened production period. In the end, Nesbø’s page-turner has become a movie that fails to match up to its energy and verve, and which remains a leaden, dreary experience for the viewer. The performances are adequate (though Kilmer, worryingly, looks as if he’s trying to impersonate present day Gary Busey), and Dion Beebe’s cinematography does at least capture the beautiful isolation of rural Norway in often stunning fashion. But otherwise, this is a routine, formulaic serial killer movie that does itself no favours from beginning to end.

Rating: 4/10 – muddled and convoluted aren’t words that any potential viewer wants to hear, but they describe The Snowman perfectly; uninspired and chock full of thriller clichés, the movie stumbles along trying to be clever and effective, but instead ends up putting a finish to any notion of an intended Harry Hole franchise.

Life (2017)

17 Monday Apr 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Calvin, Daniel Espinosa, Drama, International Space Station, Jake Gyllenhaal, Mars, Rebecca Ferguson, Review, Ryan Reynolds, Sci-fi, Thriller

D: Daniel Espinosa / 104m

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Ryan Reynolds, Hiroyuki Sanada, Ariyon Bakare, Olga Dihovichnaya

It’s a good day on the International Space Station (ISS). A probe that has been collecting soil samples from the Mars surface is on its way back and is about to be intercepted by the team on board the ISS. The hope is that the soil samples will contain evidence of extraterrestrial life. The team – medical officer Dr David Jordan (Gyllenhaal), quarantine officer Dr Miranda North (Ferguson), systems engineer Rory “Roy” Adams (Reynolds), ISS pilot Sho Murakami (Sanada), biologist Hugh Derry (Bakare), and ISS commander Ekaterina Golovkina (Dihovichnaya) – are all excited at the prospect. They’re further excited when they discover a dormant cell in amongst the samples. Derry manages to revive it, and it’s not long before it grows into a multi-celled organism. Back on Earth, the news is received with even greater excitement, and the organism is given the name Calvin.

However, Calvin enters another period of dormancy. Derry elects to use a low-level electric shock to help re-stimulate it, but this approach has an unexpected result: Calvin attaches itself to Derry’s hand and begins to crush it. Derry manages to free himself, and while Calvin devours a lab rat, Adams rushes in to the quarantine area to rescue him. Derry gets out but Adams isn’t so lucky: Calvin attaches itself to his leg, leaving Jordan no option but to keep them both locked inside the quarantine area. Adams does his best to kill Calvin but the creature escapes into the vents. As it continues to grow it causes further problems for the crew, leading them to realise that it’s far more intelligent than they could ever have expected.

With their communication with Earth cut off, and an attempt to send Calvin into deep space failing, the ISS enters a decaying orbit, one that will see it burn up on re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere. Certain that Calvin would survive such an event, the crew have to come up with a plan that will see Calvin stopped from reaching Earth’s surface, while also ensuring their own safety, but further events dictate that this won’t be as easy as they’d hoped, and soon time is running out for everyone – both on the ISS and on Earth…

The first thing that anyone will tell you about Life is that it’s so obviously an Alien (1979) rip-off (and that’s supposed to make it a bad thing). And while it does share certain elements with that movie, it’s also a little unfair to damn the whole movie with such faint praise. With Ridley Scott poaching his own genre classic in Prometheus (2012), and no doubt the upcoming Alien: Covenant (2017) as well, accusing Life of being a rip-off isn’t exactly fair criticism. And if imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery, then Life has taken a pretty good template from which to tell its story. What screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick have done is taken the bare bones of the Alien premise, and from that they’ve created an intense, thrill-ride of a movie that – if it has a real problem – only falls short when it focuses on the characters.

One aspect where the movie doesn’t emulate Alien is in the speed with which it puts the ISS crew in danger. There’s no leisurely build-up, no time to get to know anyone, and as a result, no one to care about. The characters express themselves solely through their roles on board the ISS, and when they do stop to express any philosophical or moral implications to the situation they’ve found themselves in, it all feels trite and under-developed. It’s all a bit Screenwriting 101: give the characters an inner life for the audience to connect with. But these interludes only serve to stall the movie and stop it from what it does best, which is ramp up the tension, exert as much pressure on the crew as possible, and reduce the odds of anyone surviving the longer the movie progresses.

To this end, director Daniel Espinosa and his editors, Mary Jo Markey and Frances Parker, have fashioned a series of encounters and showdowns between Calvin and the ISS crew that equate to good old-fashioned, edge-of-your-seat sequences designed to have audiences holding their breath as they wait to see what’s going to happen next. Life is like a rollercoaster ride, but an often grim, horrific rollercoaster ride, one that doesn’t let up (except for those pesky dialogue scenes), and which isn’t afraid to be nasty when it wants to be. Like the Nostromo before it, the ISS is a claustrophobic, up-is-down environment where Calvin could strike at any time. Espinosa lets the camera – operated with his usual aplomb by Seamus McGarvey – roam the corridors and remote areas of the ISS with an eerie stealth, emulating Calvin’s point of view or just setting up a scare that may or may not happen (you’ll never be too sure).

With the majority of the movie given over to these sequences, Life holds the attention and plays out its simple storyline with a great deal of confidence and a gripping visual style to it. The cast, however, are hampered by the script’s need for their characters to be introspective from time to time – too often, actually – and when they’re not debating whether Calvin should be feared or admired or both, they’re action figures floating around the ISS trying to survive. Gyllenhaal has a back-story that involves wanting to be completely alone, and which gives you a clue as to the eventual resolution, but it doesn’t resonate enough to feel important, just contrived. Ferguson is the tough decision-maker who won’t feel pity or remorse for killing another living creature, even if it is just trying to survive on its own terms, while Reynolds adds yet another semi-anarchic risk-taker to his resumé, a role he does well but which he could probably do in his sleep by now. Sanada and Bakare have their moments, and both actors are well-cast in their roles, bringing a much-needed sincerity to characters who could have been entirely forgettable. Which is almost the sad fate of Dihovichnaya, except that her encounter with Calvin is one of the movie’s more impressive set ups.

Fans of serious science fiction will find lots to annoy them, and though there are many occasions where disbelief is suspended too easily for the movie’s own good, Life isn’t going to be regarded as a modern classic like its genre forbear, but in terms of what it sets out to do – that is, entertain an audience – it succeeds for the most part, and its cheesy, forehead-slapping conclusion aside, is a lot more effective than most people will give it credit for. This isn’t a movie that will change your life, nor will it prompt anyone to become an astronaut and work on the ISS, but it is a solid piece of sci-fi entertainment, and in Calvin it has an alien life form that is one of the most well-conceived creatures ever seen on our screens; and it’s eerily beautiful too.

Rating: 7/10 – boasting superb production design and a vivid sense of impending doom, Life isn’t entirely successful, but it does more than enough to justify its existence (Alien clone or not); a popcorn movie for anyone seeking an undemanding hour and three quarters to kill, it’s unashamedly populist moviemaking and none the worse for being so.

Despite the Falling Snow (2016)

08 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Antje Traue, Charles Dance, Cold War, Defection, Drama, Espionage, Literary adaptation, Moscow, Rebecca Ferguson, Review, Romance, Russia, Sam Reid, Shamim Sarif, Spying

D: Shamim Sarif / 93m

Cast: Rebecca Ferguson, Sam Reid, Charles Dance, Antje Traue, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Thure Lindhardt, Anthony Head

One of the things that never happened in the Golden Age of Cinema was an author being given the opportunity to make a movie of one of their novels or stories. Some were employed to adapt their novels and stories, but none were ever allowed to step behind the camera as well and actually direct the movie. Nowadays, this isn’t so unusual, but it’s also still not very prevalent. So step forward Shamim Sarif, author and movie maker, who has been making movies from her novels from the very beginning. She is possibly unique in this way, and has gained a very good reputation from working on both sides of the creative arena. Despite the Falling Snow is the third movie she’s made from one of her novels, and while she may be well regarded in some quarters as the perfect person to adapt her work – after all, who knows it better than she? – the finished product here isn’t quite the testament to her talents as a director.

The movie begins in New York in 1961 with the defection of a Russian government official called Sasha (Reid). As he’s helped to escape from his Russian handlers, he asks about his wife, Katya (Ferguson). She’s back in Moscow, but his new, US handlers have no idea where she is or what has happened to her. Fast forward thirty years and Sasha (Dance) is a successful restaurateur who has a niece, Lauren (also Ferguson) who is the spitting image of Katya, and who wants to travel to Moscow to try and find out what happened to her aunt. Sasha refuses to go with her, though, so Lauren, who’s lucky enough to be an artist who’s been asked to mount an exhibition in Moscow, heads off by herself.

While Lauren’s story plays out in 1991, Katya’s story plays out in tandem from 1959 to 1961. Katya is a teaching assistant who’s also helping her friend and government official Misha (Jackson-Cohen) steal secrets and pass them on to the Americans. At a party she meets Sasha but is unimpressed by him. It’s only when Misha persuades her to get close to Sasha because of his position in the Kremlin that she finds herself falling in love with him. Meanwhile, in 1991, Lauren meets and befriends a journalist called Marina (Traue) who helps her in finding out about Katya. Marina learns that Misha (Head) is still alive, and they make plans to visit him. When they do they find he’s become an embittered, angry old man who wants nothing to do with them.

Back in 1961, Katya and Sasha wed, but she agonises over whether she should tell him she’s a spy. In 1991, Marina’s behaviour becomes suspicious, and the unexpected arrival of Sasha in Moscow prompts a revelation. Katya’s decision to tell Sasha leads to his agreeing to defect, but thirty years on only Misha holds the key to what happened to her.

A romantic drama set – partly – during a period of intense political and social upheaval, namely the early Sixties, Despite the Falling Snow has such a generic feel to it that it could have been made about any couple in any country at any time, and still have made the same kind of impact. This is thanks to Sarif’s uninspired, pedestrian direction, and a visual style that never rises above formulaic. It’s as if Sarif has forgotten to add the drama needed to make the narrative more than just a succession of events and scenes that show how two people came together and then were separated by fate in the form of expediency. Even when suspicion falls on the officials in the Kremlin, including Sasha and Misha, it’s a moment where real terror at being found out translates instead as a mild concern. Misha is almost fatalistic about the whole thing, a reaction that not even the talented Jackson-Cohen can make convincing; this man should be even more scared than he’s been already.

But if the steady stream of narrative downplaying that infuses the scenes in early Sixties Russia also makes those scenes feel awkward and inconsistent, then spare a thought for those set in 1991. Sarif makes reference to the Berlin Wall having come down two years earlier, but her new Moscow is an uneasy mix of contemporary US stylings and Russian forebearance, as evidenced by Marina’s designer clothing and old Misha’s tower block abode. The juxtaposition jars, and adds to the overall feeling that Sarif wants her characters to look glamorous against the concrete backdrop of post-Stalinist Russia (Katya seems never to be without her red lipstick). The visual conceit is highlighted by Sarif’s decision to have Katya and Sasha, and Lauren and Marina, walk along the same snow-laden stretch of riverside pavement at different times, but instead of creating an echo of past events, it appears to be more of a budgetary deference than a creative decision.

Elsewhere, narrative developments that appear out of nowhere are treated as if they are absolutely necessary to the overall plot, and that includes a left-field decision to have Lauren and Marina begin a sexual relationship. Old Sasha’s willingness to stay home out of harm’s way is overturned by the contents of a fax, while Old Misha’s decision to spill the beans about what happened to Katya is spurred on by feelings of guilt, and that old chestnut, a terminal illness. And when the viewer does find out what happened to Katya, Sarif handles it in such a hamfisted way that any emotional weight the scene might – or should – have engendered with said viewer, is lost before the scene’s even begun.

A lacklustre movie then, one that doesn’t even aim particularly high, but which does feature another of Charles Dance’s supporting roles (is he semi-retired now, is that what’s going on?) and a level of political naïvete that further dilutes the drama that isn’t really there. On the performance side, Ferguson is unable to make much of either role, as Sarif never allows the viewer to engage with them as anything other than under-developed non-characters. Reid is earnest but treading in a pool so shallow it’s practically evaporated, while Traue is allowed to look moody and resentful in equal measure even when she’s kissing Ferguson. Dance and Head bring a degree of old-time gravitas to the proceedings, but even they can’t avoid the pitfalls that are inherent in the script. On this showing, Sarif needs some more time to clarify her goals in making such a movie, and maybe next time, getting someone else to direct.

Rating: 4/10 – Sixties Moscow never looked cleaner, quieter, or more family friendly than it does in this movie, and that’s despite several efforts to make it look as if it’s not brand new; as a drama it never gets started, despite the best efforts of its cast, and by the end you’ll only want to know what happened to Katya just so that you can move on in (roughly) the same way everyone else does: without too much fuss.

The Girl on the Train (2016)

07 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Alcoholism, Drama, Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett, Justin Theroux, Literary adaptation, Luke Evans, Murder, Paula Hawkins, Rebecca Ferguson, Review, Tate Taylor, Thriller

D:Tate Taylor / 112m

Cast: Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett, Rebecca Ferguson, Justin Theroux, Luke Evans, Edgar Ramírez, Laura Prepon, Allison Janney, Darren Goldstein, Lisa Kudrow

Whenever a novel becomes an unexpectedly massive success – such as Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train did in 2015 – then a movie adaptation is sure to follow. But what happens when the source material isn’t strong enough to support a movie version? What do the makers of such a movie do to combat this? The answer, when you watch the movie version of The Girl on the Train, becomes obvious quite quickly: they don’t do anything, they merely transcribe events and characters to the screen and do nothing to circumvent the problems in the novel. Oh – and they do so in the hope that no one will notice.

From the beginning of The Girl on the Train we have a clumsy voice over that introduces us to Rachel Watson, a thirty-two year old woman who rides the train to and from work every day, and who seems to have created a fantasy world built around another woman (Bennett) that she sees most days from the train. The woman in question piques Rachel’s interest, as she lives a few doors away from where Rachel’s ex-husband Tom (Theroux) lives with his new wife, Anna (Ferguson), and their baby daughter, Evie. Believing this woman to have a perfect marriage (but having no real reason to believe this at all), Rachel is shocked one morning to see her kissing a man who isn’t her husband.

Rachel is so disturbed by this that she decides to confront the woman. But Rachel is an alcoholic, and though she makes the attempt, she suffers a blackout and wakes the next morning with cuts and bruises and blood on her clothes – but no memory of how any of it happened. Things get worse when a detective (Janney) visits Rachel and asks her if she knows the woman, whose name is Megan. Megan has gone missing, and because Rachel was spotted in the area where Megan was last seen, the detective wonders if Rachel is involved in Megan’s disappearance in some way. Able to stall the detective’s questions, Rachel then makes a fateful decision.

Anyone who has read the book will know that Rachel’s decision is to involve herself in the life of Megan’s husband, Scott (Evans). And the movie follows this route as well – how could it not? – but as with the novel, the movie has the same problem: her decision makes no sense at all. It’s obvious from Rachel’s behaviour – when she’s not fantasizing about a complete stranger, she’s stalking her ex-husband – that she’s got what you’d politely call “issues”, but the only reason the movie has for this behaviour is the fact that Rachel is an alcoholic. It was a contributing factor in her divorce from Tom, and it leads to a couple of minor revelations later on, but it ends up being a catch-all for anything she does that seems a bit manic or ill-advised. The novel tries to make her appear vulnerable; here she just seems desperate.

But as her involvement with Scott is passed off as trying to help (and punish Megan if she stops being missing), Rachel abandons all sense of decency and respect for the ordeal Scott is going through, and pushes her own agenda, which is to find Megan’s abductor or killer – and hope that it isn’t her. This leads to a couple of major revelations, and a final denouement that will have female audiences cheering, and male audiences shaking their heads at the reverse misogyny on display. In essence, the problems in the novel have become the problems in the movie.

The main problem audiences will have is a lack of someone to even remotely care about. Despite a powerful and from time to time, deeply moving performance by Blunt, The Girl on the Train operates in an emotional vacuum. The trials and tribulations of the various characters are often on display, but it’s like watching a trio of strong-minded women who’ve all decided to give up on being independent, and who can only define themselves through their relationships with men. Rachel is the ex-wife who can’t deal with the fact that her marriage is over, Megan is the wife who needs affairs to feel some kind of connection with herself, and Anna is the ex-lover turned second wife whose chief function is being the mother of Tom’s child. Viewers may find themselves put off by the relentless undermining these characters experience, and the various ways the movie reinforces the ways in which said characters were undermined in the novel.

But beyond all the ersatz feminism, there remains the problem of the central mystery. Megan’s disappearance becomes a murder enquiry when her body is discovered in some nearby woods. But though Rachel wonders if she did kill Megan during her blackout, the likelihood of that actually having happened is so small it’s on a virtually sub-atomic level. So that leaves Anna, a character so gloriously one-dimensional that Ferguson’s talents as an actress are wasted; her husband Tom, whose outward calm and sincerity masks a need to control his environment; and tortured husband Scott, whose wild, angry outbursts could be a smokescreen for something much darker. And those are the only suspects, as the man Megan is seen kissing is her shrink, Dr Kamal Abdic (Ramírez), and despite the screenplay’s ham-fisted attempt to put him in the frame, he’s the classic red herring. This then makes it easy to work out who killed Megan, and also why.

For a thriller based on the novel “that shocked the world” – really? – The Girl on the Train is a bit of a damp squib, only showing signs of life when focusing on Blunt’s portrayal of Rachel. Blunt brings some much needed craft to her performance, ensuring that while everyone around her aims for competent, she’s proving capable of giving a layered, compassionate performance that elevates the material whenever her alcoholism is mentioned, or she’s on screen. In contrast, Taylor, who failed to find the motivation to make The Help (2011) as compelling as it should have been, leaves the viewer with the feeling he’s only semi-engaged with the project, and as a result, none of it resonates in the way that it should. It all leaves the movie looking and sounding like an uninspired echo of the original novel – and a less than engaging one at that.

Rating: 5/10 – slickly, professionally made, but as hollow as an Easter egg, The Girl on the Train delivers low rent thrills and annoying plot developments as it unfolds the mystery of Megan Hipwell’s disappearance; the non-linear approach of the novel is retained, and used to good effect, but this is still one literary adaptation that should have been more enticing and rewarding than it actually is.