Good idea lost in the noise

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Some reviewers are measuring the movie with calipers and are quick to point out that a train might not have the same kind of brakes as shown in the film. That does not matter at all. This is not a train. This is a movie. I would remind everyone that Superman cannot fly. He has no propulsion system. Dracula does not really turn into a bat. Star Wars did not really happen and it will not happen. These are movies for entertaining some viewers.This film has great camera work throughout. The acting is very believable. The casting is fine. There is a chick flick quality of soap opera mixed with sensational action and adventure scenes. Rob Lowe does many of his own stunt scenes. I did not watch it with a slide rule pondering each railroad error. I watched it to see the action and the huge scale of the explosive scenes. I don't worry if it is possible or impossible or likely or unlikely. Some people in California will get an idea from this what life might be like after an earthquake that destroys a major city. I will suggest it might not be a good movie for railroad employees to use as job training. If you like to watch a big long action film with a family, this is a superb choice.

Are you telling me that amongst all the other awfulness of this there really is a character called Phister? You sure they didn't mean the director or the writers? Well, it fits with the rest of it, I guess. As I need ten lines of text, so it says in the rules,to make a review I'll try and think of some more to say about this farrago. First, in fairness mode we can say that much of the camera-work isn't at all bad if at times repetitive. Shows us some nice travelogue views, too. But just when you think that O.K., here comes the heroic resolution, this is going to be the bit where virtue triumphs and the bad guys(unseen and possibly non-existent - mind you, I couldn't stick it to the end)are heroically thwarted. Pelion upon Ossa to no effect - oi ve.Mike

Nearly every trite event possible has been thrown into this dragging nightmare. The evil money hungry young man sneaks an apparently armed Russian bomb onto a train. How did he get it on there? The Russian's are trying to "dispose" of this? Why didn't they disarm it? Isn't it easier to dispose of nuclear waste in Russia? And the spineless accountant has to go along with the scheme. Why do they always tell the accountant? But he calls in a warning (from the office phone to the train control center, not the police by the way). What do you look under to find the number for the train control center? Was it the chemicals that ate through the chemical resistant air hoses in a few short hours or was it the fire inside the boxcar that shouldn't have been able to reach under the car to the brake lines? And don't the brakes go ON like tractor trailers when the brake pressure is lost? Couldn't they have put the train electric motors in REVERSE? What about all those big wheels on each train car that run the MANUAL EMERGENCY BRAKES? And the train coupler failed? What are the odds? The government bomb experts have no idea what the bomb configuration is, but one brave man tells us he can disarm it in his sleep. And it just goes on and on and on and I could go on and on and on, but all bad things must end. And the very minute the crisis is over apparently somebody is rebuilding a house on the tarmac outside the hanger. How can so many good actors put together such a horrible movie? I hope you get to watch this too because misery loves company.

I'm late to this party; it just came on TV (actually, is on as I write) and I, unfortunately, tuned it in thinking it the least of many evils. Should have watched the Mayberry RFD marathon of episodes I've already seen 10 E3 times, including the original airings. At least they bring back memories of a simpler time, when we literally left our doors unlocked and didn't bat an eye at hitchhiking to Florida, not worried about being raped, sodomized, dismembered, and dropped in a 55 gallon drum off a bridge.This movie is execrable. Others have already pointed out the many, many, MANY, errors of fact. I will simply note that the basic premise of the movie itself, the runaway train due to lost air pressure, should have clued the producers before they read past the first five pages of this abomination of a script. It has been 135 years since Westinghouse patented his first air brake. This is NOT state of the art technology, and how any moron, even the cretins who produce made-for-TV movies, could base an entire movie's plot on this idea simply escapes me.Loved the cast, hated the maudlin shyte they had to spout to play their roles in this misbegotten, miserable mess. What a joke! Fortunately, after the first 15 minutes I realized that it was irredeemable and spent the remainder of the air time doing some much-needed cleaning out and organization of my email folders. It was (is) on mainly for background noise, although I must admit that I did give it my attention during the more spectacular moments, the only thing offered by this garbage, and those regrettably separated by the batcrap that passed for dialogue and character development and interaction. Oh, well, at least it was abridged for this showing. GOK what it must have been like to watch the whole bloody thing when it was released.