Here's Jeremy Irons doing again what he did all those years back with Meryl Streep in The French Lieutenant's Woman; telling a story within a story, but unfortunately not with the same acclaimed results.
Night Train to Lisbon is a dull, plodding affair. Boasting pretensions to being a dramatic thriller, its most exciting scenes occur in the first few minutes, when Irons's Swiss linguistics professor Raimund, happens upon and stops a likely suicide from occurring. From there, it's pretty much all down hill in a train which never manages to work up a full head of steam.
A talented European cast is assembled in what is a handsome looking production and then all asked to speak English with (generally) Portuguese accents. In very much a dialogue-heavy film it doesn't work, just as it didn't work in a similar experiment in Loving Pablo, where a host of Latino actors were all required to speak heavily accented English.
The constant flashbacks just don't allow any building of the slightest degree of suspense and tone to the story. Sadly this strangely almost appears appropriate, when the leading character frequently describes himself as being "boring". I looked forward most to the scenes involving optometrist Mariana played by German actress Martina Gedeck, for the simple reason that her character stood out amongst everyone else, in that she smiled and showed emotions other than those associated with very serious faces.
With its highly experienced and watchable cast (in spite of all the accents) Night Train to Lisbon is hardly a train wreck of a movie, but beware. It is an extremely pedestrian affair. There are likely to be some engrossing stories somewhere concerning Portugal's Salazar dictatorship, but this train won't take you in that direction.
Night Train to Lisbon is a dull, plodding affair. Boasting pretensions to being a dramatic thriller, its most exciting scenes occur in the first few minutes, when Irons's Swiss linguistics professor Raimund, happens upon and stops a likely suicide from occurring. From there, it's pretty much all down hill in a train which never manages to work up a full head of steam.
A talented European cast is assembled in what is a handsome looking production and then all asked to speak English with (generally) Portuguese accents. In very much a dialogue-heavy film it doesn't work, just as it didn't work in a similar experiment in Loving Pablo, where a host of Latino actors were all required to speak heavily accented English.
The constant flashbacks just don't allow any building of the slightest degree of suspense and tone to the story. Sadly this strangely almost appears appropriate, when the leading character frequently describes himself as being "boring". I looked forward most to the scenes involving optometrist Mariana played by German actress Martina Gedeck, for the simple reason that her character stood out amongst everyone else, in that she smiled and showed emotions other than those associated with very serious faces.
With its highly experienced and watchable cast (in spite of all the accents) Night Train to Lisbon is hardly a train wreck of a movie, but beware. It is an extremely pedestrian affair. There are likely to be some engrossing stories somewhere concerning Portugal's Salazar dictatorship, but this train won't take you in that direction.