|
How entertaining? ★★☆☆☆
Thought provoking? ★☆☆☆☆ 17 April 2012
This a movie review of TRANSIT. |
|
|
|
|
|
“You said no-one would get hurt,” non-descript robber/victim.
“I lied,” Marek (James Frain).
That’s the kind of dialogue in TRANSIT. Jim Caviezel and Frain reunite after the lacklustre THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO, where they played on opposite sides, again here antagonists, and this time in even more banal fare. I love me a quality action-thriller. It doesn’t matter about the budget, it’s all about the inventiveness of set-pieces and the heart-pounding pace. TRANSIT is amateur hour. What attracted anyone to the project is the question that I kept asking myself. The cast is very decent, including Harold Perrineau, Diora Baird and Elisabeth Röhm. The script is not. The direction and editing are woeful.
Caviezel’s Nate is just out of prison (after serving 18 months for a white collar crime), and is attempting to reconnect with his wife and two sons by taking them on a camping trip. Meanwhile a gang of ne’er-do-wells rob an armoured car of $4 million leaving dead bodies in their wake. I think we’re meant to draw a moral line between Nate’s victimless fraud (for his children’s college funds) and Marek’s heartless psychopath. The state police close the borders. To get the loot out the thieves hide it on the unsuspecting family’s 4X4 while at a service station. Instead of just pulling the family over after the roadblock, they weirdly hound them until a Louisiana state patrolman stops the 4X4. And Nate ends up getting arrested by an uptight cop. Talk about convoluted. TRANSIT descends into the ridiculous, where credibility is jettisoned in favour of the characters acting devoid of brains and/or logic. A frustrating watch.
|
|