The Girl on the Train

Following in the footsteps of recent cultural trends to adapt big selling novels to the big screen such as Gone Girl (2014) and Fifty Shades of Grey (2015), we have a film that embodies the vogue of female empowerment within the thriller genre.

Written by Paula Hawkins, adapted by Erin Cressida Wilson and directed by Tate Taylor, the story revolves around the intertwining lives of three women - Rachel, Megan and Anna - who all encounter each other and how the men in their lives intersect.

Rachel (Emily Blunt) is an alcoholic who travels the train everyday to New York City passing the old house she used to live in with her now ex-husband Tom (Justin Theroux) and his new wife Anna (Rebecca Ferguson).  Rachel is estranged and bitter towards this new union, as they have a newborn daughter, Evie, something Rachel and Tom were unable to have together.

This has driven Rachel to drink and she regularly calls the newlyweds to the point of prompting Anna to complain to police. Tom tries to be civil yet Rachel will not go away.  Two doors down lives Megan (Haley Bennett) and her husband Scott. Scott wants to start a family whilst Megan is reluctant to, this reluctance only becomes clearer the further along in the story we go.

From the outset, the question of family is prevalent. Rachel and Tom want a family they cannot prompting a separation, Tom has a family with Anna which drives Rachel crazy and their neighbour Scott would love to have a baby with Megan but she will not.

One day travelling to work, Rachel sees Megan embracing another man on her porch prompting her to confront Megan in a drunken rage one Friday night.  That same night Megan disappears leading to a missing person's investigation led by the feisty cynical Detective Riley (Alison Janney).

More twists and turns abound in the narrative as we learn the truth and full extent of Rachel's alcoholism, Tom's real character and why Megan goes missing.

Ultimately comparisons will be made with Gone Girl which is always unfair but it follows the same thread of all men are bad and women must bond together themes, whereas in Gone Girl, Ben Affleck's character was a shit he was outdone by the mad as a hatter Rosamund Pike. 

In this film, we have at the start three unsympathetic female characters, only when Rachel learns the truth of her relationship with Tom, do we gain sympathy because she has been mentally abused in contrast to the sad alcoholic at the film's outset.  This does not do credit to the work Blunt does at Rachel, her stirring downward spiral into the darkness of drink dependency is some of the best work she has ever done and rightly gained acclaim upon the film's release.

It is a shame that the rest of the film could not raise to her high standard of performance apart from Janney's all too brief cameo as Det. Riley, whose breakdown of the exposition towards Rachel after their first conversation is a fitting swipe at both the preposterousness of the plot and the melodramatic feel of the piece.

The gripping moments do not grip and when the real bad guy is revealed, it happens too swiftly and smacks of an 'of course it is' moment and the red herrings laid out for us such as Scott (Luke Evans) as an abusive husband who really just wants to start a family with the woman he loves is a herring does not hang out there long enough.

All in all the film could have been better if it focused on better performances rather than relying on a plot that must have gripped on the page but failed to grip on the screen.

This Is Where I Leave You

Originally published in 2010, Jonathan Tropper's novel This Is Where I Leave You is soon to be released as a major motion picture starring Jason Bateman, Tina Fey and Connie Britton.

It tells the story of Judd Foxman, a man in his early 30s going through several setbacks including the discovery of his wife sleeping with his boss.  Whilst all this is occurring, Judd must go home for Shiva following the death of his father.

This means sharing a room with his dysfunctional family; his mother, Hilary, a noted celebrity therapist; his two brothers, Paul and Philip and his sister, Wendy and all their significant others and offspring,  The premise of having a family who do not communicate stuck in a room together where they have to grief as one is a common thread in American literature and comedy, making this novel ripe for the impending big screen treatment.

However, what is so refreshing about the novel is how expertly Tropper has convincingly rendered the dysfunction and disintegration of the modern American family in the modern age.  His ear for dialogue is impressive and provides a real zip to proceedings which allowed this reader to not stop turning the page; if cast correctly, the delivery in the movie could be golden.  Especially during the Shiva scenes themselves where Tropper's cynical observant eye is at its most uproarious.  At times, this reader was laughing out loud not just from dialogue but from the situation they are presented in.

Yet you can tell Tropper wants his characters to triumph, the depiction of brain injury neighbour Horry is particularly well done with great restraint and dignity. Yet Horry is given some of the better lines in the book.

When reading the book, two famous old adages came to mind. You cannot pick your family and with friends like these who needs enemies.  There are a few well handled set pieces such as the scenes between Judd and old flame Penny, and in Judd the author has created one of those fine comic creations that is both cynic and soft around the edges, and the book never becomes over sentimental when it so easily could, he author who has also written How To Talk To A Widower, is far too optimistic for that.

This Is Where I Leave You is out now on paperback from Orion Publishing