Night Train

I really enjoyed the experience of watching Les Bernstien's debut film "Night Train". It's a challenging film as it's surreal, bizarre and disorientating. There's a plot but the strong use of visual techniques means concentration is required throughout.

There's more than a touch of German Expressionism to the proceedings as we watch the film's anti-hero, Joe Butcher, search for details of his lost brother, Zack. Butcher is played by John Voldstad, who delivers a mesmerising and memorable performance.

Nikoletta Skarlatos brings glamour to the proceedings as the two sisters, Bobby and Regina.

This is sleazy stuff and there are moments when the viewer may feel like they're actually at the heart of the action.

This won't be a film for everyone but fans of transgressive and experimental cinema will probably love this gem. I was genuinely sad when the ending arrived - this is a film that was a pleasure to watch and genuinely unique.

A strong 8 out of 10.

Writer-director Les Bernstien comes from a technical background specializing in special camera effects, so here's a neo-noir ultra-low-budget flick that shines mostly due to Bernstien's appreciation and magnificent facility with hard-core German Expressionist sets and mattes and camera angles, and classic film noir lighting and camera tricks. (Parts of the film almost look like classic avant-garde films of the 30s and 40s.) This is all in the service of a story set in some latter-day Dantean hell circle, or Tijuana, Mexico. The b&w film stock reminded me of Jarmusch's Dead Man, and the overall style and tone of this film resides somewhere in the area between Touch of Evil/Kiss Me, Deadly, and Sin City. The story is ultra-lurid to the point of an almost cartoonish otherworld ala Sin City, but it's really Tijuana, and most of the actors aren't actors. And there's also a b&w documentary look to it, esp. in the street scenes. And there's a Bukowski-ish alcohol-sodden, disease-ridden nightmare quality that I found really creepazoid. What a unique film! What a terrific, seamy, virtuoso display of classic expressionist lighting and camera effects! Not for everyone, mind you...and the spoken tracks are dubbed in. Weird, weird, weird wonderful film for a certain small percentage of film noir buffs.

Some guy tries to find his lost brother in Tijuana, Mexico. Beyond that, I remember very little of the story. But the story is not really the point. From director and camera expert Les Bernstien, "Night Train" is a low-budget film that wows the viewer with terrific B&W cinematography.

In the opening credits sequence, noir visuals combined with a great theme song immediately grabbed my interest. It's one of the best intros to a film I can recall, and suggests a Western motif. As the plot progresses, the same high quality visuals prevail, with slanted camera angles, scenes transposed over other scenes, and other camera tricks.

Background sounds are naturalistic, with no effort to edit out ambient traffic noise or people's voices, which adds enormously to a sense of realism. If nothing else, the viewer gets a harrowing impression of downtown Tijuana, an impression the local chamber of commerce probably would just as soon squash.

None of the characters in this film are appealing, least of all Joe, the lead character, surrounded by thugs and general lowlife. Sometimes we seem to be watching Joe's reality. At other times we're watching his internal nightmares. Reality and nightmare blend together. And with a general absence of plot structure, the story can be confusing and hard to follow.

But this is a film to watch for the terrific cinematography, not the story. It's like some brilliant cameraman happens on to some random thug, and then follows that thug through his desperate, chaotic search south of the border, and in the process the man with a camera creates a surreal home movie.

I found 'Night Train' very compelling. It visualizes the human condition in a variety of aspects in a non-American locale, specifically Tijuana. A person, John Butcher, searches for a lost brother like a rampaging bull with eyes only for his goal. He has to find his brother. He has to know what happened regardless of whose feathers he ruffles. Like a bull, he is eventually disposed of after he finds a package containing money that is fervently sought by a Don Alamada. John won't live long enough to savor any of the fruits of his findings. John has tuberculosis, but he still intends to satisfy his own curiosity.

Oh, the surprises he finds in the box and the hotel!

The film contains memory sequences like those of a dream world and a number of gun and ax wielding sycophants. Bottom line: money is the root of all evil.