In The Train, Burt Lancaster is a rail yard worker in Occupied France as well as a somewhat unwilling Resistance fighter. Then the Nazis try to steal the art out of Paris' museums and he's roped into what can only be described as a Mission: Impossible scenario, and an incredibly suspenseful and exciting one at that! Big budget thrills thanks to explosive action, but also, a great villain who keeps making things hard on our hero's dwindling team because he's as smart as they come. And when it's all said and done, there's more to this than a simple series of well-produced action beats. It dares as the question: Was it worth it? Is France's cultural heritage worth the lives lost? Not with big speeches (except a dramatically ironic one), but with images. What can we accept as a loss in war? Evidently, lives are worth less than territory, than political power, than landmarks, than identity... That's a historical truth, but is it a moral one?
The heavy use of American and British actors portraying Frenchmen and Germans (particularly Burt Lancaster, he's not even trying to put on an accent) is distracting at times, but the film is very well shot, exciting, and has some interesting themes about war. If you like Frankenheimer and Penn's other work, I highly recommend this.
Exciting WWII drama! At the end of the war the Nazi flees Paris with a train of stolen paintings. The Resistance does everything to stop the train. Great stuff!
I thought it was a fun romp (although that doesn’t feel like an appropriate way to describe a WWII film) that was perhaps 15 or 20 minutes too long. It could have been a more poignant affair if they’d dialled up the injustice or made things a bit trickier for the good guys — I never really felt like these Nazi pansies could stop All-American QB Womanizer Burt Lancaster.
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Sonjay89
Why would a German guy say "miles per hour"?Siskoid
In The Train, Burt Lancaster is a rail yard worker in Occupied France as well as a somewhat unwilling Resistance fighter. Then the Nazis try to steal the art out of Paris' museums and he's roped into what can only be described as a Mission: Impossible scenario, and an incredibly suspenseful and exciting one at that! Big budget thrills thanks to explosive action, but also, a great villain who keeps making things hard on our hero's dwindling team because he's as smart as they come. And when it's all said and done, there's more to this than a simple series of well-produced action beats. It dares as the question: Was it worth it? Is France's cultural heritage worth the lives lost? Not with big speeches (except a dramatically ironic one), but with images. What can we accept as a loss in war? Evidently, lives are worth less than territory, than political power, than landmarks, than identity... That's a historical truth, but is it a moral one?senorroboto
The heavy use of American and British actors portraying Frenchmen and Germans (particularly Burt Lancaster, he's not even trying to put on an accent) is distracting at times, but the film is very well shot, exciting, and has some interesting themes about war. If you like Frankenheimer and Penn's other work, I highly recommend this.demet
Watching this pic was a well-timed preference after the news about Nazi plunder which was occurred in the public eye in these very days.daisyaday
http://www.imdb.com/video/hulu/vi1203372569/Earring72
Exciting WWII drama! At the end of the war the Nazi flees Paris with a train of stolen paintings. The Resistance does everything to stop the train. Great stuff!dchauvin
I thought it was a fun romp (although that doesn’t feel like an appropriate way to describe a WWII film) that was perhaps 15 or 20 minutes too long. It could have been a more poignant affair if they’d dialled up the injustice or made things a bit trickier for the good guys — I never really felt like these Nazi pansies could stop All-American QB Womanizer Burt Lancaster.Full review: https://medium.com/@davidchauvin/spike-lee-s-essential-films-slef-episode-2-the-train-1964-c346f4d2b190#.v4gqmcf0b