Movie Review: The Train

Train to nowhere 1/5
Pratim D. Gupta

Raksha Mistry and Hasnain Hyderabadwala have done it again. The Train, that premiered at IIFA’s Cineworld Castleford, is a frame-by-frame copy-paste of Derailed. Arey kuch to original hona mangta. From office colleagues to reception girl, every single character; from dialysis machines to briefcases, every single prop; from trains arriving at stations to trains leaving stations, every single shot composition; every damn frame has been copied so unabashedly that you feel like it’s a licensed remake.
But alas, that it is not! How can anybody in their right senses agree to Geeta Basra becoming Jennifer Aniston? Worse still, Aseem Merchant plays Vincent Cassel’s character. And then everything is set in cheapie Pattaya where there are more gol gol train lines than go- go bars. There the Thai cabbies speak in Hindi and cricket betting happens between Zimbabwe and Bangladesh!
It’s sad really that the big IIFA premiere had to be The Train. The prints of Khoya Khoya Chand were not ready and so Sudhir Mishra’s Guru Dutt tale starring Shiney Ahuja and Soha Ali Khan missed the bus. The Train joining Lagaan, Yuva and Parineeta as the IIFA world premiere movie is criminal, to put it politely.
Worried that this review is approaching its last station without a mention of Emraan Hashmi? Well that’s because he is not bad in the film. Hang on, he isn’t even close to Clive Owen but he underplays enough in a movie where everyone is flared nostrils and clinched fists to make him look the part. His kissing helps, of course. The serial kisser is in ruthless form here locking lips with Geeta at least thrice (only talking about the right shots, not the discarded ones) and smooching newcomer Sayali Bhagat like it’s her last film. Poor Sayali, who is otherwise good as the wronged wife, looks totally out of place during the kissing capers.
The only original bogey in this Train is the music by Mithoon. Woh ajnabee and Zindagi ne zindagi ko are great, but just get the CD yaar, don’t dare waste money on the film.
If only Raksha Mistry and Hasnain Hyderabadwala had followed their tagline — ‘some lines should never be crossed’ — the IIFA picnic would have been a better place to be in.