TransSiberian

An American couple, Roy and Jessie, finish charity work in China and decide to come home from Beijing to Moscow on the Trans-Siberian railway. The younger pair who share their compartment, Carlos and Abby, look at first like nothing more than drifters. When Roy fails to make the train at a station stop, Jessie is left alone and within hours is inside something with no way back. By the time the Russian narcotics detective Grinko boards, the train is a trap. Brad Anderson directed and wrote it with Will Conroy. Woody Harrelson plays Roy and Emily Mortimer plays Jessie, with Ben Kingsley, Kate Mara, Eduardo Noriega and Thomas Kretschmann. Filming started before Mortimer could finish the script; she was on set two days after agreeing to do it. It was shot not in Siberia but in Lithuania, where the government made forty kilometres of track available to the production. The budget was 15 million dollars and the worldwide gross stopped at 5.9 million. The reviews said the opposite: Rotten Tomatoes 91 percent, Metacritic 72. Roger Ebert gave three and a half stars out of four and praised the way it builds real fear and suspense. It premiered at Sundance in January 2008 and opened in limited release that July. Who it is for: viewers who like confined thrillers that build slowly. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a likeable lead. The film has its protagonist make bad decisions on purpose and sets out to make you uncomfortable.