Death Train

I am only guessing when I say this, but I think that this particular Nu Image movie was formed with the producers saying to the writer, "We have a lot of stock footage from past Nu Image movies. Write a screenplay that will enable us to use all of it." I say this, because DEATH TRAIN is just *packed* with obvious stock footage. Not only did I recognize some of the footage from other Nu Image movies, but the stock footage often does not match the newly shot footage! (The bulk of the movie was shot in Bulgaria, while the stock footage came from movies shot in South Africa.) With such laziness and cost-cutting, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the rest of the movie is very lacking. Bryan Genesse is very bland as the hero. And even though these bad guys are a lot more sadistic than you usually get in movies like this, they are otherwise lacking a lot of color as well. The action is mostly dull shootings, not taking any real inspiration from the source material, UNDER SIEGE 2. And while the movie is taking place in Mexico, there is only one character in the entire movie that looks Mexican. While I did stay to the end because I was curious as to how things would be wrapped up, I can tell you that the payoff is definitely not worth slogging through all the cheap and uninspired events happening before it.

I don't mean to bum anyone out right at the beginning of a review, but this is a pretty sucky movie. Sucky on the point of being dreadful. Produced during that period in the early 2000s when the Nu Image studio couldn't make a good movie for neither love nor money, it's an annoying exercise in mundanity. Nearing the end of his career as an action hero, lead star Bryan Genesse does what little he can to make this one stand out but only manages to save it from a rock-bottom rating.

The story: When a gang of arrested thieves (led by Bentley Mitchum) takes over the train transporting them to prison and makes hostages of the passengers, it's up to their captor (Genesse) to end the crisis.

The film was probably made under very limited means, as evidenced by the frequent use of stock footage. The exterior shots of the train are taken from a movie shot in British Columbia, and seeing the filmmakers try to pass off this landscape as the Mexican countryside is kinda goofy. So is the casting: like many Nu Image flicks, this one's supporting roles are predominantly played by Bulgarian performers, and if you think it's been interesting listening to East Europeans fake English dialogue, just wait 'til you hear 'em speaking Spanish. Before long, it seems too much to take for even the producers, who end up dubbing most of the Spanish. Disappointingly, they did not dub Bentley Mitchum's lines. Mitchum is a fair character actor but his performance here is atrocious. The screenplay is clearly going the "crazy dangerous" route with its villain, but this comes across as irredeemably annoying, with Mitchum spewing adolescent threats and insults while largely failing at being intimidating.

Even though the movie makes a point of focusing on various hostages who don't actually affect the story too much, one guy who doesn't get much of a personality at all is the hero. When he first appeared, I thought Bryan Genesse was a side character because of his lack of charisma, and he never gains any throughout the runtime. Genesse was apparently on board with the movie, performing his own stunts while running across and hopping about the moving train, but he's just so generic here that the role could have been played by anybody. This homogeny carries over to the action content, which is comprised mainly of shootouts and a few explosions. Genesse only has two fight scenes, and while the brawl with Mitchum came as a surprise for being anything other than dismal, they're not worth talking about.

DEATH TRAIN doesn't bear thinking about too much: I get grumpy about having wasted my money and want to rate it even lower. I can't recommend it to anyone, and hope that it only finds its way into the hands of its particular niche audience – whoever that may include.

This is quite simply one of the worst films ever made. It has no plot, it has no acting, or plain overacting. It has guns with limitless ammo and people who can carry limitless ammo clips.

But the very very worst thing - there was not one, single, tiny bit of continuity anywhere in the film. Ine some of the scenes the train was quite clearly standing still, not even moving, yet seconds later it was thundering at high speed over a bridge, next moment it was crawling along slowly in the mountains.

I didn't watch the credits, but I have to assume there was no continuity editor listed simply because a blind man could do better.

This is possibly the most horrific film in history. (Maybe even worse than 'The Mummy Returns')

The special effects looked like they were compiled in Microsoft Paint. Horrendous. The acting was incredible. The thought that these people were actually being paid for this is incredible. The gun fights were about as sharp as Ade Akinbiyi's shooting, were they actually pretending to aim for people or aiming to miss?

Could they not afford extras? One moment there were three people sat in the back of a carraige and within minutes all the "terrorists" had forgotten they were there.

And what was with the mexican train driver? Surely this was a joke. Or do all mexican train drivers listen to that music whilst swigging tequila?

This was entertaining, almost as entertaining as guessing where the train would be in the next scene. Speeding across a bridge, rolling into a station, standing still in the middle of the woods?

Hammy acting and non-personality stereotypes proliferate to the end. It really should have been made as a cartoon . Not to mention the mini sub-plots borrowed from a dozen different disaster movies. That's half the problem - it started off as an interesting little action/crime film, but quickly degenerated into a disaster picture. Still, since I was smoking a spliff at the time, I at least had a good laugh out of it.