This is Hitch in pretty close to top form. The story is a fun and exciting thriller about a young woman traveling across pre-WWII Europe by train who believes that an older woman she had become acquainted with has suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. To make thigns more frustrating, everyone on the train claims the
older woman neverexisted and that it's all in the young woman's head. To be fair, the young woman was hit in the head with a flower pot, but still, that doesn't stop her from trying to prove that she's right and everyone else is (for whatever reasons) trying to hide something.Nowadays this plot seems very quaint, familiar, and nothing special, especially since Flightplan borrows so heavily from it. However, I think it's held up quite well over the years, and is definitely somewhere on the high end of the scale for Hitch (either for his 30s period, his British era, or maybe just overall period). The film does start off a little slow and take some time to get going, but once it does, it's just sails right along. There's a good mystery thriller here, some good twists, great atmosphere, and some decent acting. Essentially, this gives you all that you'd expect from a suspenseful mystery thriller, especially one made by the Master of Suspense. All in al, I give it an extremely high B+
October 11, 2007
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