Thrillers of expansive natural scope that retain both an authentic sense of place and a tightly coiled sense of character interplay are a fairly rare breed, but it’s just that small target for which director Brad Anderson is aiming with Transsiberian, a
slow-boil, humanistic thriller about an American couple who get sucked
into a downward spiraling drug investigation while traveling by train
in a foreign land.

Co-written by Anderson (The Machinist, Session 9) with previous collaborator Will Conroy, Transsiberian
unfolds largely on and around the legendary, same-named train. Iowa hardware store owner
Roy (Woody Harrelson, operating in his charming goofball mode) and his
wife Jessie (Emily Mortimer) decide to take the long way home after a
church-outreach sojourn to China. En route from Beijing to Moscow, the
pair meet up with another young couple, Carlos (Eduardo Noriega) and
Abby (Kate Mara), and bond over booze for the guys and cigarettes for the gals.

Roy
gets separated from the group at a stop, and complications ensue when
the trio disembark to wait for him to catch the next train, which ends
up taking a day and a half. When Roy and Jessie are reunited, the
former is accompanied by Ilya Grinko (Ben Kingsley), a Russian narcotics
detective who’s trying to track down some missing heroin, which he
believes may be being smuggled in novel form.

On its own deliberately plotted terms, Transsiberian more or less works, though chiefly as a drama instead of a thriller. As with Session 9, Anderson convincingly establishes a place that serves as a compelling anchor of mood for his film as a whole;
here, though, it’s not plumbed for creepy effect so much as it is for
general detail. The movie turns on a couple shocking acts of violence
that complicate the story in interesting ways, with the intrigue really
thickening at the 50-minute mark, and again with a second story bump at
the 80-minute mark.

Not entirely coincidentally, after an early
introduction, these moments loosely align with Kingsley’s
reintroduction to the narrative. As Grinko, an ex-KGB agent turned longtime cop who’s
suffered the socioeconomic disadvantages of the end of the Cold War and
dissolution of the Soviet Union, Kingsley
displays a certain darkly chameleonic charm; partly solicitous, partly
menacing, he slips into the movie, skulks around and stalks off with
its soul, mostly because we never seem to get a firm grasp of
what exactly he wants. Far from coming off as irresolute, though,
Kingsley just deftly plays the undertones of sometimes conflicting
motivations. Even after fates are decided in relatively stark terms for
the other characters, we’re left to wonder a bit more about Grinko, which seems
in every way appropriate, given Kingsley’s performance.

Housed in a regular Amray case with an accompanying, attractive cardboard slipcover, Transsiberian comes presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language 5.1 Dolby digital surround audio track, and optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. Alas, there are no supplemental extras here, apart from a clutch of previews, which is a drag. Bonus-free discs like these are pointless these days, and a slap in the face to consumers — all the more so since Anderson is such a thoughtful interview. B (Movie) D- (Disc)