The Train - 1964 - 3 Stars

Actors: Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield
Director: John Frankenheimer

There's not much use for the black and white action film, I realized while watching The Train. There are some interesting sequences, but we're reminded by every frame that we're watching something old that happened to someone else. The film also runs an unwieldy 140+ minutes - an interesting exploration of war and its effect on people, yes, but Bridge On The River Kwai this is not.

One thing I found funny about The Train is that there must've been a scene out of Barton Fink regarding its casting - everyone in the film is either French or German, but they speak only English with accents. However, Burt Lancaster, our hero, is the one person who speaks the President's English, with no attempt to hide the fact that he is American (e.g. he uses American metaphors). One imagines a pained studio executive ranting to the director about how Americans want to see American pictures with American heroes, and Burt Lancaster's got to talk the way people want him too, dammit. Frankenheimer has a similar setup almost 35 years later with many accented people and one American protagonist in Ronin, but at least there people speak their native language when it's called for (and Robert Deniro is actually American in the film).