THE GIRL ON THE E TRAIN
Every film adaptation of a best-selling thriller has a big mountain to climb in the post- Gone Girl world. David Fincher’s take on Gill ian Flynn’s break neck-paced, post-feminist pulp showed just how far good source material can stretch in the hand sofa surgically- precise master. The Girl on the Train, adapted from Paula Hawkins’ novel, is sufficiently sombre but fails to reach anything near those thrilling heights.
Directed by Tate Taylor, who also adapted best-seller The Help into a very corny and simplistic snapshot of 1 960s race relations, The
Girl on the Train gets the full Clue do-style murder mystery treatment. Placing an essential Emily Blunt at the centre of the film as Rachel, an alcoholic and obsessive ex- wife, she experiences a drunken blackout during a crucial series of events that result in the disappearance of a local woman named Megan Hipwell.
Was it Rachel in the tunnel, with the vodka-filled drink bottle? Or was it one of the many other suspect sin the delicious, overstuffed jar of red herrings?
With Rachel guiding us through the story, her patchy memory serves to keep us in the dark for as long as possible. T hep lo tuns pools as a series of vignettes, darting between the other lead female characters, as well as time and place. Gradually we learn about her previous relationship, its downfall, and her ongoing obsession with various women from the safety of the train. As the scenes purposefully pulse in and out of coherence and chronology, Emily Blunt’ s blotchy-faced, bleary-eyed Rachel becomes a very unreliable narrator.
Blunt does her best to pull off an unlike able, unhinged woman, and it’ s about time we saw her in this sort of role. The press run for the film has provided quotes galore of Blunt praising the opportunity for women to play more contentious characters, and she embraces t he opportunity to shed her English Rose fa ca de in favour of a lot of blubbering and vodka-sip ping. If Tina Fey in Unbreakable Kim my Schmidt has taught us anything, it’s that acting drunk is hard to pull off. Blunt never overdoes it or plays it for laughs, instead building a tragic portrait of a life squandered to obsession and addiction.
The supporting characters all play t heir equally murky parts. Justin Theroux appears as Rachel’s cheating ex-husband Tom, filled to the brim with sleaziness. His new wife Anna (Rebecca Ferguson) is the perfect Other Woman: young, blonde, bubbly. The other couple who soak up much of Rachel’ s time are the soon-to-be-missing Megan ( Hayley Bennett) and t he gruff Scott
(Luke Evans, ) who she creepily sketches daily on her commute. They are supposed to be the picture of tumultuous youngy love, but this feels shallow. There are only so many times you can watch a couple throw each other half naked against a closet/ balcony/ table without rolling your eyes. Despite its strong cast, the rest of The Girl on theTrain is sadly dull, giving the impression that the film thinks itself more clever than it really is. It feels a bit like when you area little drunk and think you definitely nailed t he high part of I Will Always Love You at karaoke, only to watch it back and hear a sound akin to a turtle giving birth. The shifting chronology and sketchy scenes are forced to lurch forward ur gently towards the climax of the film, a corkscrew twist that delivers a very overdue Gone Girl- style mic drop moment.
The Girl on the Train chugs along steadily on a well-travelled track, but delivers about as many thrills as the Swans online at 2 pm on a Thursday.