|
|
Man on the Train (L'Homme du Train)
|
List Price: $19.99
Medicine Alternatives Price: $13.99
Your Savings: $ 6.00 ( 30% )
Availability: N/A
Manufacturer: Paramount
Starring: Jean Rochefort, Johnny Hallyday, Jean-François Stévenin, Charlie Nelson, Pascal Parmentier
Directed By: Patrice Leconte
|
Average Customer Rating:  
|
|
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9780792190615
Format: Anamorphic
ISBN: 0792190610
Label: Paramount
Manufacturer: Paramount
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Paramount
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2003-11-25
Running Time: 90
Studio: Paramount
Theatrical Release Date: 2002
|
|
|
|
|
|
Editorial Reviews:
|
Patrice Leconte’s (Girl on the Bridge) MAN ON THE TRAIN tells the touching story of two men from different walks of life as they develop an unexpected friendship and change each other’s view of life at the last possible moment. Milan (Hallyday), a thief, steps off the train in a small town in the French Alps where he plans to rob a local bank. By chance, after he is unable to find a room for the night, he encounters Manesquier (Rochefort), a retired poetry teacher whose sedentary lifestyle bores even himself. Sharing nothing in common except important plans for the weekend – one is to rob a bank and the other is to go in for open-heart surgery – the two men begin talking and soon develop a respect for one another, as well as a secret longing to live the type of lifestyle the other lives. And, as the friendship grows even stronger, each man defies his personality to explore his yearning for the life of the other.
|
|
|
Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating:
Summary: A poetic of the solitude!
Comment: Two men meet themselves accidentally in a little town. One of them keeps a secret, while the other is extremely friendly.
A weird friendship will arouse among them - with Schubert's First Impromptu OP. 142 as musical curtain - in which both will be aware about their unfinished projects of life from two well different perspectives. One is a thief who plans to steal a bank, while the other is a retired poetry professor.
An emblematic resemblance of two well opposite sides of he coin united by the unhappiness and existential solitude.
A film that literally captivated and engaged the members of the Jury in Venice 2002 as Bes Film and Best Actor.
The performance given by Jean Rochefort is simply out of this world.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Assured film-making
Comment: This French film will keep you happily entertained for an hour and a half. It concerns two men with completely opposite life-styles who meet and then gradually come to the realisation that they would prefer the other persons life to their own. This being a French movie its all done with a style and pace that is completly different from standard Hollywood movies, so don't expect Mission Impossible III. There is one character in the film who speaks once a day at 10.00am, and when he does speak its a bit like Eric Cantona - very enigmatic!
The character Milan who leaves the train at the beginning of the film is a professional thief. The man he meets (Monsieur Manesquier) is a retired school teacher and writer of poetry. Initially Milan has nothing but contempt for the old school teacher and this leads to some funny scenes where Manesquier tries to impress Milan by working out or generally acting cool. The school teacher even goes as far as volunteering to help Milan in his up and coming bank heist.
So this won't be to everybodies taste, but if you stick with it theres a good chance you will enjoy it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: "You watch too many thrillers."
Comment: L'Homme du Train is one of Patrice Leconte's best films, playing nicely to his strengths and never outstaying its welcome thanks to a tight running time. An arthouse success outside France but a disappointment in its home territory, it's a wistful look at life's disappointments and missed opportunities seen through the unlikely friendship of Johnny Hallyday's ageing bank robber checking out a small town bank and Jean Rochefort's retired schoolteacher who watches too many thrillers as each man sees in the other the life they could have lived had they only had the courage to try. The former monosyllabic and increasingly cautious, the latter unguardedly talkative, this odd couple make an engagingly credible friends, united by their own rapidly approaching dates with their respective fates.
In many ways its almost a small-scale modern-day Gallic working of Hugo Fregonese's melancholy 1954 Civil War Western The Raid, which saw Van Heflin's Confederate tempted to settle in the town he has come to destroy given a French thriller makeover, even retaining some Western motifs in Rochefort's Wyatt Earp fantasies. But while the ending is never in any doubt, one of the chief delights of the film is the unexpected turns it sometimes takes, never more than in a delightful scene in a bistro where Rochefort decides to take on some bad-mannered troublemakers against Hallyday's advice only to find things turning out very differently from what both men expected. Even scenes you'd expect to be played for comic disaster turn out quietly triumphant, such as Hallyday teaching one of Rochefort's private lessons for him - and actually turning out to be good at it despite never even reading the book under discussion.
It's a small film, but one that never feels like a chamber piece, and even if it slightly overplays its finale as each man briefly gets their wish, its small pleasures and genuine affection for its characters more than compensate. Sadly, unlike the French DVD, this release is barebones and devoid of extras, but the film itself is reason enough to buy.
Customer Rating:
Summary: EXCELLENT FOR UNDERSTANDING THE HEROIC AND GREAT WEARY FRENCH INTELLECT
Comment: I discovered this film on a rack in a liquor store in Mexico and brought it home for viewing. It builds much more slowly and subtly than the vast majority of American disposable blockbusters. In fact it withstands and demands and rewards several viewings, like re-reading James Joyce all of your life. I have used it very well in French One classes, and the students ask to see it again, despite the undeserved R ratiing. I cannot see anything in this film which merits the Restricted rating, except perhaps it does not make fun of the French, except in a very subtle and wry manner. If the R is for language, hey, it's in French! And I do not see any obscenities. Heck, Shreck has more obscenities. Rather this film is filled with poetry, including declaimed by a ruffian to his former poetry professor who confronts him as a means of ending his old and sad life and only comes out a hero. This film is way to subtle for the average American viewer trained on blast-and-crash movies, but please live with it awhile until you can perceive its intricate gossamer invisible webs and resonance. The forsaken robber who speaks only one line of original poetry at ten o'clock each morning is inexplicably gripping and poignant and exposing the harsh light of speaking about him only destroys the compelling effect. This gentle film builds slowly to the bright day of a fulfilling and illuminating and revelatory ending like great films as Grand Illusion or Babette's Feast. I highly recommend it, as one who lived in France over thirty years ago. Its American R rating is incomprehensible.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Lasting Impact
Comment: A teacher and a lifelong criminal meet in a pharmacy in a small, out of season French town. The hotel is closed, the thief and his headache wind up at the teacher's big old family house. Days pass. One laconic, one loquacious, each is ever more drawn to the other's life. Saturday approaches; each prepares and subtly prepares the other for the approaching personal crossroads. And for both Saturday goes terribly wrong but brings one last shared miraculous moment and vision to move each man beyond what his life before has been. Meticulously acted by Jean Rochefort and a weary Johnny Halladay and tensely quiet until its jarring conclusion, Man on a Train retains its grip long after the final credits.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|