Cape Cinema

The setting in filmmaker Brad Anderson's most recent offering is a train lumbering across the wintry wasteland of Siberia. The Trans-Siberian train journey from China to Moscow becomes a thrilling chase of deception and murder when an American couple (Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer) encounters a mysterious pair of fellow travelers as well as a lascivious Spaniard (Eduardo Noriega), a fishy Russian narcotics officer named Grinko (Ben Kingsley) as well as a half-dozen other easily excitable foreigners. Director/co-screenwriter Anderson, with his panache for arousing fear from harried reality and rotted atmosphere, locates dread more than just inside his characters' psyches. At its queasy best, when absorbing the naturally phantasmagoric vibes of Siberia, the film's script wanton-declaration of theme and a cynical and fashionable belief in moral grayness complements the frosty setting. (R, 111 mins., English and Russian with English subtitles)