The Train

excellent war movie with a difference. burt lancaster gives one of his best film roles ably supported by paul schofield. the plot is a little far fetched but i'm sure something like it could welll have happened in WW2.

A good train/wartime thriller set in France with Burt Lancaster giving his usual very dependable and honest performance. But the acting for the main part is woefully sub par, with Paul Scofield, surprisingly the main culprit. He doesn't seem to understansd his speeches at all, stressing the wrong inflections in nearly every one of them. I may be too pedantic about this, but obviously Frankenheimer or his speech director didin't do the job properly, and as for the French actors speaking English they also seemed to have no idea about what they were saying. Not good enough

A brilliant film. One of Burt Lancaster best I believe! Outstanding acting by all members of the cast. Great atmospheric scenes all well directed and for its time the photography is top notch! A must see for all ages.

It's a movie about a nazi colonel who steals a bunch of expensive french paintings and loads them onto a train in the hope of getting them into germany, pretty much only for monetary gain, he doesn't seem particularly bothered about the nazi cause. So he loads up his train, and Burt Lancaster and his fellow engineers attempt to thwart his plans. Lancaster's character cares little about the paintings and the glory of France, and thinks risking lives for a bunch of paintings is stupid, but when the colonel kills a close friend of his... IT BECOMES PERSONAL.

The movie focuses on Lancaster and the men who risk their lives for these paintings, and by the end they're left wondering if all the death and sacrafice is really worth it.

It was a pretty damn good movie, with lots of scenes of trains crashing, and derailing that must have been pretty expensive to do. In one scene there's a big crash between 3 trains, I was just thinking what a budget it must have had, Peckinpah had to fake a train crash in The Wild Bunch.

You may know of the director, John Frakenheimer from the fairly recent Ronin (which I love), with Robert DeNiro. He's a really excellent director, there's some really amazing shots in this movie. Like when a Spitfire attacks the train, or any one of several train crashes, with the cameras placed really low to the action. The acting is excellent particularly from Lancaster and the Nazi colonel who has become obsessed with the paintings and his train. I really like the way they square off against each other.

Good movie, keep an eye for it. It's not the best example of it's genre, but if you like movies like Bridge On The River Kwai you'll probably enjoy it.