Greenes
Please don't spend money on this.
FirstWitch
A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.
Geraldine
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
jabrbi
OR, Murphy's Law meets Too Many Cooks OK, here's how the story writing conference went for this film: Right! We're here to discuss ideas for a train disaster film. Any ideas? Freight train instead of passenger train with dangerous chemicals. Like it. Anything else? A nuclear weapon instead of chemicals. Hmm. How about nuclear weapon AND chemicals? Much better. Shoddy maintenance takes out the brakes and train careers toward city. Good. Any cities with 20 miles of track heading downhill into the centre? Tracey, check into that will you. Anything else? Chasing train that tries to stop the train but fails. Yes! Chasing train causes train to keep going when it could have stopped. Yes! Yes! And so on, and on, and on.After about a month the conference finishes and EVERYTHING is in the film, except the kitchen sink. Anything anyone could think about got included in this film. Doctors, police, firemen, military, heroes, disasters, fires, explosions, big trains with massive inertia, annoying kids (are kids always annoying?), useless women, helicopters, guns, lots of aimless running around.Too many cooks involved in this film.Then they had the script writing conference where they had to stitch all ideas together into a plot: Smuggle the nuclear weapon on board the train to save money. I'm sure that happens every day. Shoddy maintenance that nobody notices takes out the train's brakes. Daily occurrence in my neck of the woods. Drop the hero onto the train using a helicopter. Everybody does that in film these days, just look at James Bond. (That one has to go OK.) People fall over at the worst times and damage their legs. Happens to me every time I take the subway. Have the coupling on the chasing train fail, just because. Those things never work. Have something go right, like stopping the train, and then screw it up, like the chasing train suddenly hitting it with an almighty thwack that doesn't derail anything. Train derailments never happen in real life, no matter what hits the train. Derail the train. Nope, can't do that in case the nuclear weapon explodes. Hah! Fooled you. Just when you thought something was going to go right.And so it went. If anything could go wrong in this film it did: water meets sodium (boom), dangerous chemicals go on fire for no good reason, car accidents, bike accidents, helicopter accidents, mobile phones suddenly don't work, cars run out of petrol, nobody remembers to take a gun but everyone has a torch, accident blocks only road out of town.There's at least 3 films in this one presentation: train disaster movie, dangerous chemical spill disaster movie, massive explosion disaster movie. Thankfully, the film moves from one film to the next linearly so we're not troubled with having to keep track of who's in which movie. But if does get very exhausting after a while, just from the sheer onslaught of one disaster after another.However, there are a few redeeming moments. There's an explosion sequence that I thought was very well done for such a low budget film. And there's a couple of times where the whiny kids almost get it. (Sadly they survived, but I did get my hopes up for a second.) And there's a couple of black men who get to be heroes, instead of the usual chisel-jawed white men. (Go back to disaster movies of the 1970's and 1980's and try to spot a non-white hero.) Overall, there's just too much thrown into this film. If only they'd taken one idea and made a 90 minute movie, then I'd have had a much better experience watching it. And then they could have made the other two films at a later date.As it is, stock up on the drinks and chips and hunker down for a LONG disaster unfolding before your quickly tiring eyes.
swekos
I rarely, if ever, give a movie the dreaded 1. I usually try and look for the good parts of a movie, whether it's the acting, or the story, or some subplot, or even the special effects. But with this total waste of time, there was no doubt at all. It is sad when a movie is so bad, so lame, that is essentially a parody of itself. What is even sadder is that this definitely was not a cheap movie made by college kids with nothing better to do. No, this is a network flick, and lots of thousands of dollars went into creating this piece of nonsense The acting is the high spot of the movie, yet in places it is barely watchable. The production values are so-so, the effects are there, but aren't exactly that special. But what really makes this movie so bad, it's the plot. It's not a really bad idea, it's just how the idea was developed, or tried to, i better say. The plot holes are so big, you could drive a train through them. I could not figure the meaning and purpose of about half of the scenes, and the entire riot subplot is mildly put, ridiculous.
jinns_girl
I just watched this movie on USA. I'd always caught the very end of it, but never seen the whole thing. Now I'm sorry to say that I have. While I don't know much about the atomic end, I was a chemistry major in college. First of all, sodium is a metal, not a liquid. There is no way it could "leak" out of a barrel. The only thing leaking would be mineral oil with is what sodium is stored in. Secondly, while it does react violently with water, I cannot imagine it reacting with a huge fireball. I still have no idea how the movie gets from this point to the end because I was so disgusted with the lack of research into simple chemical reactions that I changed the channel.
mulder665
From the creative masterminds who probably brought you "Walker Texas Ranger" comes the action packed suspense movie extravaganza of last century!!Starring Rob Lowe, Mena Suvari, and a dozen other people I don't know, it's..... Atomic Train!! Watch as NTSB investigator John Seger tries to stop a freight train carrying a nuclear weapon race out of control through the scenic Rocky Mountains to the city of Denver!!See corny effects like CGI images of trains rushing past trees and mountains. Watch in amazement as actors come within mere inches of hitting each other in the face, and yet their victims' heads still fly backwards.Marvel at geniuses who park their helicoptors on the train tracks even when they know that there's a runaway train on the loose. Wonder in awe why professional school bus drivers with two dozen kids in tow would cross a railroad crossing without even looking, only to have the engine stall when they reach the middle of the intersection... what are the odds!!!!Be entertained by the intelligent conversations such as the one featured here...John's Daughter: Where's my Dad? John's Wife: I don't know. Last I heard, he was on the train when it derailed. John's Daughter: So... where is he?Brilliant!! And the catchy one-liners are even better. The comedy never stops!! But you'll have to see for yourself. This movie is a riveting two and a half hours long, but don't ask me how it ends... I shut it off with an hour left!!!!That's "Atomic Train," possibly airing on great networks like USA... check local listings for the next showing. If you miss it, you might cry!!
