The art of infusing humour into a film of a serious, sensitive theme is a very delicate one; naturally, not many filmmakers succeed. In addition to being bombed with meant-to-be-funny characters and silly scenes, The Train fails to evoke emotion, primarily, because of the frivolous manner in which it has been treated and the lack of technical ingenuity.
A group of terrorists fill explosives in pressure cookers, and enter a railway station. Mammootty, an observant cop, spots one of them, and senses something odd from their movement. An implausible cat-and-mouse game ensues. By evening, seven bombs are scheduled to explode in the local trains.
To begin with, what is the use of employing a cinematographer if they are incapable of capturing any believable images? At rush hour, the audience is given to understand, Mumbai trains have very few passengers and a lot of empty seats! This is a mockery of reality. Instead of lugging 35mm cameras around a prop train and using pompous lighting, one should learn to improvise when necessary: switching, in this case, to a small camcorder or a DSLR, and placing the actors alongside the jam-packed real-life commuters in a live train.
The editor’s notion of creating pace is by occasionally fast-forwarding real-life footage of moving trains, and passengers at the railway stations.
For the ‘mandatory’ stunt scene, there’s Mammootty bashing up a youngster, the antagonist, who isn’t fighting back. The megastar, with all his experience, ought to have sounded off the stunt master/director for the very idea. The answer to violence is not violence. Thus, such an act creates the reverse effect: it diminishes Mammootty’s stature while putting the lad in a sympathetic position. Mammootty would have come across as a stronger person if he had, instead, send the fellow reeling on the floor with one tight slap on his face.
It isn’t hard to figure, however, why Mammootty and Jayasurya said yes to this film; they have both been handed memorable characters that have, perhaps, traits similar to their own: the former, a tough, conscientious citizen, and the latter, an excited, cheerful chap. The loud bad guys come across as anything but efficient, trained terrorists. And Sheena, about to make a suicidal jump, is as calm as a youngster looking forward to her first bungee dive.
The script is plain ridiculous, even though ideas have been stolen from the Oscar-winning Crash. And the comic dialogues are delivered at the wrong time. There is so much of buffoonery happening throughout this film that it ends up negating the good moments and taking away the impact of the message, which isn’t much anyway. Frankly, it wouldn’t have been out of place to have an item girl doing a slapstick act atop one of the bogies.
