It’s almost entirely devoid of humour. There are “jokes” at the expense of gay people, fat people and Mexicans. Even worse is a section in which Stiller attempts to cross the US border illegally. This ends up troubling and not remotely amusing.
Stiller and Monaghan are OK and nearly develop some chemistry, but the ugly sentiments of the script deny them any real depth or warmth.
Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan play a couple who agree to investigate a missing girl in a poor part of Boston. They do so in parallel with the police, who are led by Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman.
There are plenty of surprises as the plot twists and turns, but the resolution is satisfying and none of the threads collapse under scrutiny – as tends to happen with lesser storylines.
One criticism: a lot of the dialogue is difficult to make out.
The plot is extremely difficult to summarise, but here goes: a U.S. Army Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) finds himself on a train journey into Chicago. The eight minutes that he experiences ends in a terrorist explosion that kills all of the passengers on board. He is forced to relive the same eight-minute stretch of time again and again until he can find the bomber and prevent the disaster. Meanwhile, in the intervals between each attempt he comes to in what seems like a helicopter cockpit, where he is advised and manipulated by a mysterious military unit led by Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright, who need him to succeed in his mission to prevent a series of even worse terrorist incidents.
In narrative terms there’s a Groundhog Day element – the idea of repeating the same moments until you get them right – but the tone and feel are completely different. This is tense, taut and suspenseful, with a humanity that makes it more appealing than you might expect a tech thriller to be.
Michelle Monaghan plays the woman he’s sat opposite on the train, who he falls for and wants to save. It’s complicated but the storytelling is excellently handled and it’s far more lucid than the summary above might suggest.
In 2018, Very Farmiga would show up again in an oddly similar train-terrorist thriller called The Commuter.
