The Train DVD

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Disliked it
Story	Very ordinary
Characters / Performances	Weak
Special Effects	Weak
How does it compare to similar films?	Weak

Advantages:	none really
Disadvantages:	poor acting, blatant copying of plot, shall I go on?

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

Vishal and Anjali Dixit are settled in Bangkok with their young daughter who has diabetes and is awaiting an organ transplant. The marriage in under stress so when Vishal meets the beautiful Roma, also married with a small child and having marital problems, on the train on the way to work they become friends and start to develop feelings for each other. The day they decide to take their relationship to the next level and book into a hotel, they are robbed in the hotel room and Roma is raped whilst Vishal lies helpless on the floor. Anjali is worried about Vishal's behaviour and he tries to repair his marriage only for someone to start blackmailing him about the incident in the hotel room. Vishal's life is turned upside down and gets worse and worse.

Will Vishal be able to gain control of his life again? Will Anjali find out about the affair? Will they be able to pay for the live saving transplant that their daughter needs? To find out, you'll have to watch the film.

This film is pretty much a copy of a Hollywood film starring Clive Owen and Jennifer Aniston, I could give you the name of the film myself but why don't I leave you guessing (no points or prizes awarded for getting it right though, it's pretty easy)! But guessing what film it could possibly be will surely be more interesting a way to spend your time than investing it in watching this "derailed" film called The Train. Sorry about the deliberate pun, no actually I'm not really sorry…

Emraan Hashmi stars in The Train along with Sayali Bhagat & Geeta Basra. I've never seen either of the female leads before nor do I wish to and neither had I heard of them previously. From doing a bit of quick online research though; it appears that Sayali Bhagat was Miss India 2004 (she plays the wife in the film) - she is very attractive and one wonders why a man would have to stray so easily when married to such a beauty. One shouldn't wonder too much. Some films are not supposed to make much sense, or are they? Geeta Basra has done one other film apart from this one and apparently hails from London before she entered the Bollywood film industry. Maybe she should return to the UK and go back to studying or whatever she was doing when she left here at the age of 17...

Emraah Hashmi only seems to get parts where he is able to show off his muscles and bare some flesh. As an actor he has a long way to go before being taken very seriously by me let alone millions of other Bollywood fans. He is definitely not an A list Bollywood star and as such rarely gets to star with A list heroines either. It is somewhat interesting that he has been so very typecast in basically every film I've seen him appear in (bar one called Awarapan) - if he wants to be taken seriously as an actor, I think he needs to move away from the "himbo" roles he has been playing to date.

I guess I should give Aseem Merchant a brief mention, he plays the rapist/blackmailer - haven't seen him before in a film. He was just about passable as the bad guy, although he wasn't at all scary as he needed to be in the character. To be honest I felt he was better looking than the lead - to me that's worrying when the bad guy seems more charismatic and appealing than the good guy!

I'm sorry to say that none of these actors did their roles credit. It's supposed to be a thriller but the whole plotline was so blatantly copied from the Hollywood version that it made me cringe. The acting of all 3 leads was pretty dire and I felt they were just delivering their lines for the sake of it. At least with the Hollywood version you have Owen and Aniston at least trying to play their parts convincingly. What really hacked me off the most was the fact that I've seen countless Bollywood films with their plots lifted from Hollywood films, be they excellent or very below par films but this one pretty much took the biscuit in that even down to the main character's daughter being ill with diabetes and needing an organ transplant and the friend who tries to help him out of the hole that Vishal has dug himself into and having the same thing happen to him - they could have at least varied the plot a little. Do they really not realise that people who watch Bollywood films also watch NON-BOLLYWOOD films and will get hacked off with such blatant theft of storylines. Come on Bollywood scriptwriters and directors; give us a bit of variety!

The songs in the film were not well placed and the steamy scenes were more titillating than artistic nor were they in keeping with the storyline. A disappointing film all around; poor acting and direction do not help when a film is so clearly copied.

The film is produced by Narendra & Shyam Bajaj and directed by Hasnain Hyderabadwala and Raksha Mitry and was released in 2007 making this a relatively new film which should have gone straight to video as the expression goes (or erm DVD in this case) as far as I'm concerned. It runs for 134 minutes and is certified 15.

I cannot in all honesty give this film more than 3 out of 10. If I hadn't already seen the original Hollywood version I might have been able to give it a 4 but it's really not worth more than that.