The Man on the Train
Directed by Patrice Leconte
Starring Jean Rochefort, Johnny Hallyday, Jean-François Stévenin, Charlie Nelson and Pascal Parmentier
Rated R for some language and brief violence.

The French make really, really good movies. That’s for sure. But as an American it’s sort of difficult to determine just how good really. On the one hand I really can’t remember the last French film I saw that I didn’t like. One the other hand, if a film sucks and its in French, there’s very little chance that it would make it over here in order for me to see it, not like it, and realize that the French are indeed capable of making crappy movies.

So what’s to be concluded? I guess nothing, but the drop of uncertainty does make me just a bit less depressed about the state of the American cinema. Maybe there’s some dorky, whiny, barely employed recent college grad living halfway between Paris and Nice complaining about how the French equivalent of Jim Carrey keeps making lousy, banal, unartistic, commercial movies. Probably not, but as an act of patriotism I’m not going to bother to find out.

What does this have to do with Leconte’s The Man on the Train? Well, on its surface this movie is really nothing special. It features a simple, cute plot and mainly consists of a couple of guys talking to each other. But yet it’s a beautiful, riveting film. A rough but unspectacular bank robber gets off of a train, looking tough. He bumps into an old retired poetry teacher. They become friends and slowly realize that they envy each other’s lives. They become more and more like each other emotionally, mentally, physically. I won’t ruin the ending, but
that’s the basic concept.

Simply put, Hollywood wouldn’t stand for anything of the sort. The movie features what is more or less a standard three act structure, but the film’s motivating moments pack relatively little punch in comparison to its subtle, in between-scenes. There are no moments of monumental revelation that produce fantastic action. The film seems committed to saying that’s not how things work in life nor how they should work in the cinema. Instead it suggests that life’s great decisions are more like sitting down at the barber’s and deciding to get a
new haircut. It throws people off and it can be tough to pull the trigger, but you know its just your hair and its just your life, if you want to try to make a change, you can. This, of course, isn’t to say it’ll always look good and the fact of the matter is that most people will refuse to change. The point is that The Man on the Train avoids easy moments of artificial drama in hopes of striking a chord with the viewer’s life experience, not simply it’s knowledge of how things work in the movies.

Leconte’s direction succeeds throughout, both during his subtle moments and on the few occasions where he brings some formal flash to the picture. The cinematography is beautiful and the two leads, Jean Rochefort and Johnny Hallyday, complement and contrast each other perfectly. The film’s ending is perhaps a bit more opaque than it ought to be and the film’s drama may not work with the average megaplex-goer, but it’s a tight, enjoyable ninety minutes and a great reminder of what a film doesn’t have to be.

Rating 84%