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The Train

The Train

List Price: $14.95
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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Top-notch, completely absorbing suspenser.
Review: This suspense-filled epic of a train carrying stolen French art treasures to Germany and the attempts to waylay it is in the same league with Frankebheimer's Seven Days in May and the Manchurian Candidate. Lancaster is in top form and so is Paul Scofield as his ruthless, icy cold adversary. Good performances too from a totally European supporting cast. Dubbing was probably involved but as with Das Boot it is expert dubbing. Very highly recommended.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A MASTERPIECE!
Review: This was brilliant movie,it's filled with action around every turn of the tracks. It's about a french patriot who is ordered to drive a train load of stolen paintings from the Germans during World War Two (the paintings were also stolen by the Germans).Although this french patriot is trying to get the paintings back even if it takes sabotage and risking his and other people's lives just for the paintings known as the glory of France and for an old brave engineer who was killed by the Germans because he wanted to stop the train himself.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Ascend.
Review: Truly,an outstanding film in every respect,especially for the flawless performances by Burt Lancaster as Labiche,and Paul Scofield,menacing,as Colonel Von Waldheim. Both Characters iron will,sheer determination to outwit the other is portrayed in a class of it's own,made more impressive by the stunning camera work,and razor sharp editing.This DVD presents the film matted (correctly)at approxiamately 1.66:1,and a very good transfer,does justice to a film,which surely demands a Special Edition,if any film ever did.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Frankenheimer's Overlooked Classic: The Best Action Film
Review: When Burt Lancaster called on director John Frankeheimer yet again to rescue another picture from another director who had left the project, the call took Frankenheimer to Paris to bring his brilliant black and white extreme depth of focus shots to bear on thought provoking subject matter.

La Bisch, the unwilling resistance man late in WWII (Lancaster) is pitted despite his objections against a cultured German general who is attempting to take every painted masterpiece out of Paris that can be found.

Knowing that delays to shipment in the face of the german retreat and allied advance, La Bisch uses both ingenuity and enormous physical effort to attempt to block the movement of a train laden with stolen art, eastbound from Paris.

The plot twists are the stuff of legend, and each twist provokes controversial positions regarding the importance of art and the brevity of human life.

The long shot action scenes in this film are brilliant, and Lancaster, who was injured during filming, performs much of the extraordinary scenes in the movie with a real (not feigned) limp.

Fine ensemble cast, including many of the best French character actors of the time, a serious script saved by brevity from the melodramatic and arguably the best camerawork and editing of any action film in history (you read right) make this film superior to Frankenheimer's other B&W films from the period (e.g., The Manchurian Candidate and even The Birdman of Alcatraz).

The Train belongs in any serious English language cine collection. This is one of the top 100 films of all time.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best Action-Adventure Evermade!
Review: When you have Burt Lancaster the finest actor to ever grace the Silver Screen at his indomitable peak, with John Frankenheimer one of the all-time great directors in a terrific story..Then it doesn't get any better than this!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Underrated war actioner--art for whose sake?
Review: _The Train_ has held up well since its release in 1965. Dismissed as an improbable shoot-em-up then, it tells a much richer story than the special-effects vehicles in the genre nowadays. Burt Lancaster isn't especially gallic as the Frenchman Labiche, but his acting talent and intensity soon steamroller any resistance the viewer may have. Paul Scofield is perfectly cast as a cultured monster, the Nazi colonel who is bent on spiriting the paintings away into Germany. One can easily picture him murdering hostages between sips of cognac.

Shot in black and white, the film is dark and greasy-looking. The screen is filled with churning railroad machinery much of the time, which dwarfs the people around it. The wheezing, snorting engines are also stars in this movie. Even the sky looks dirty in the daylight scenes. Oh yes, there's a sensational train wreck, too. Definitely less mindless than your average Rambo flick, but no less exciting.


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