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Absolutely brilliant

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Destiny decided that Jean Rochefort and Johnny Hallyday, the two wonderful lead actors of "L'homme du train" ("Man on the Train") died a couple of months apart, at the end of 2017. Destiny or coincidence? This question is actually one of the key topics of this wonderful film directed by Patrice Leconte and made in 2002, 15 years before the disappearance of these two sacred monsters of French cinema (and music in the case of Johnny Hallyday).This is the story of two men who meet by chance. Monsieur Manesquier (Jean Rochefort) is a retired teacher of French literature who lives an old bachelor life in the bourgeois house where he was born and where he is supposed to die. Milan (Johnny Hallyday) is a bank robber who came to the small town to prepare the robbery of the local bank. One talks a lot, the other is a man of few words. We'll get to know much about the previous life of the first, and almost nothing about the second who is a mysterious gangster figure on the line of characters like the one in Jean-Pierre Melville's "Le Samouraï". They apparently have not too much in common, but they will discover soon not only consistent affinities, but also something more surprising: each of them yearn to the way of life of the other."L'homme du train" is flawlessly executed, starting with the well written script which builds the two characters from a well dosed mix of dialogs and silences, the set that recreates the small town house full of memories from other times, and the superb acting of the two actors. Patrice Leconte also plays with cinematographic quotes like the Western-like beginning which brings the stranger to the remote small town to the gardener with the scythe scene reminding Ingmar Bergman. There is a lot of charm in the relationship between the two men who get gradually to know each other, in the atmosphere that surrounds them with signs of the unexpected convergence of their fates. "L'homme du train" is a beautiful movie in the best tradition of the French minimalism combined with 'film noir'. A gem that brings back to our attention that two great actors that the French cinema recently lost in one of the best films in their respective careers.

This was a joy to watch. Sometimes a director and his/her actors are utterly in sync. Here we have the unfolding of two somewhat mysterious characters. One leads a life of violence; the other is living an unfulfilled tedious existence. The man on the train arrives and the kind professor offers him a place to stay. At first they seem to be so far apart in their life stories, one would think they would never connect. As time passes, we find out that neither is happy with his lot. The violent man begins to see the almost monotonous life of the professor as very desirable, while the aged teacher feels that he has never had any adventure. A bank holdup is in the offing and he even asks to be a part of it. The best part of the film is the learning process that takes place as a sort of love develops between them. The old professor is very ill and is going to have surgery, and his relationship with his new friend sustains him, though he is filled with fear. See this for the subdued yet powerful portrayals of the two stellar actors.

Two older men towards the end of their lives, meet, become friends of a sort, and part. Not the usual cheerer-upper for the Multiplex, but a thoughtful, intimate and often strange film from quirky director Patrice Lecomte; many of the reviews you may read use the word melancholy, and it is that--but in its careful observation of the habits and haunts of these men, it is also quietly funny, from the obvious parody of Spaghetti Westerns transferred to a moribund French village, to the purveyor of baguettes who always queries if " there be anything else?"Man On The Train is a film about friendship, about the value we put on our lives, about last minute regrets, about a lot more than the sound of the train on tracks that frequently haunts the film, mixing with a muted, mysterious soundtrack. Like Lecomte's quietly observant and haunting "The Hairdresser's Husband," this is an oddity whose difference makes it memorable viewing.

Well, "The Man on the Train" takes a long time getting where it wants to go and is very French in its sense of humor and dialogue, but as they say, all's well that ends well. In this case, it's a great ending. I had turned off this movie around an hour in, bored by the dialogue and lack of plot advancement, right around when Luigi arrives in town.DO NOT DO THIS! I decided to give it a last chance. From there, the film gets more interesting, and the ending sequence, virtually wordless as we go between each man's "operation," is suspenseful. The interesting thing about "Man" is that it's not about trading places: it's about two people who wade in the waters of each others' lives but never quite dive in. That could have been unfulfilling, but it turns into an engaging narrative on the "what ifs" we all ask ourselves instead of becoming an overly contrived caper.Rochefort powerfully conveys his frustration and anger, while Hallyday becomes more sympathetic as the film goes on. The ending shots of him sitting in the house by the piano are totally understandable: Milan sees Manesquier's life as leisure, while Rochefort sees in Milan's a life of adventure. Both of them have that "grass is always greener" problem, and both of their lives unfortunately, as unchanged, lead to dead ends. I suppose you have to be the risktaker for a while in order to enjoy the leisure, and maybe you have to have been stuck in a dull life to enjoy the risks. It seems as if neither has ever known the other side and so ends life with regret about what could have been. Let it be a lesson to us all!