All aboard Rick & Morty’s Story Train for this trip to Disappointment with stops at Nonsensical Parkway, Confusion Central and bypassing Narrative Structure and Illumination Broadway.
We set off on a midnight train to Atlanta. At first it seems like a regular train with a bunch of murderous and mysterious characters, but there is more afoot that initially meets the eye. The train carriages themselves are set up like well appointed drawing rooms so that’s probably your first clue that things are not what they seem - there are no discarded copies of ‘Metro’ lying around and Baz hasn’t tagged the entire carriage.
We meet Jericho, who in another life was ‘Candyman’. He’s an ex-slave on a mission to kill all former slave owners and their first born children. One such child who is on-board is Annie, who has engaged the bodyguard services of ex-civil war soldier Roland. Candyman and Ro-land come to blows early on, but retreat to different carriages when things don’t go to plan - bullets don’t seem to be working for some reason.
We meet some other passengers, such as one chap who has a penchant for strangling prostitutes and another lady who has her ex-slave employed as her maid. They all have a past to hide but secrets are slowly revealed when they are joined by a shape shifter. As you have probably guessed things moved away from a conventional western when this chap appears, and employs ropey special effects to become each of our character’s dark secret.
After their pasts are laid bare the gang decide that the train they are on is on its way to Hell. Is there anything they can do to save their souls? Well, Lance Henriksen is in the last carriage and given he’s the Devil there may be some deals to be done…
This wasn’t a terrible film but it doesn’t have much to recommend it either. The production values were pretty low despite a couple of familiar faces such as the ‘jump to conclusions’ guy out of ‘Office Space’ making a brief appearance complete with unconvincing diabolical laughter. The lighting was poor in places with it hard to make out the action, and one character, who has a bag over his head, is virtually unintelligible.
From the start I thought the twist was that they were on the road (tracks) to Hell and this proved correct - to be fair they didn’t really dress it up as anything else, so it wasn’t even a surprise never mind a twist. Lance was a pretty laid back Devil and offered little in the way of menace. As is standard, he offered the characters deals to get out of their predicament - terrible, lop sided deals! We did get a chance to see some of our characters in flashback and were able to decide for ourselves who was worthy of the visit to the flames and who was a victim of circumstance. Some were evil and went down that path whilst others made noble sacrifices having come to terms with their crimes. There were no real surprises in anyone’s arc with redemption liberally sprinkled about whilst the real baddies got their just desserts.
There were a couple of decent ideas in play, but the film was limited by its scope and budget. The Devil must have better things to do with his time as did Lance who clearly only spared half a day for the production.
The film only lasts about 80 minutes and the story would have been better used as an episode of ‘The Twilight Zone’ or the like rather than a half baked full feature.
You will see a lot worse and there was enough to garner half marks although that hooded guy, whose dialogue I couldn’t make out a word of, cost them a chunk on his own. Overall it’s not a train to catch but if you find yourself on-board, you may as well stay on for the predictable and undemanding conclusion.
Best Bit : What’s this noose doing here? 'W' Rating 12/23
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