Director: Tate Taylor Starring: Emily Blunt Studio: Universal Pictures Genre(s): Drama/Thriller Rated: R (For violence, sexual content, language and nudity) |
Alfred Hitchcock perfected the “man wrongly accused” formula
back when he was in the prime of his career, and I feel Tate Taylor’s “The Girl
on the Train” should have taken a cue from his book on how the formula works
best. Hitchcock knew that the man in
question had to be a likable guy. He had
to wind up in a situation he could not have possibly predicted he would find
himself in. Fate had to draw him a bad
hand that he was in no way responsible for.
There also had to be one more key to the formula, which I believe “The
Girl on the Train” obviously misses.
This movie doesn’t really have a man wrongly accuses so much as it has a
woman wrongly accused. Her name is
Rachel Watson (Emily Blunt), and she rides the train every day to and from
work. She sits in the same seat and
watches the same people out the window.
She takes a particular interest in Megan (Haley Bennett),
the pretty blond who has an (supposed) ideal relationship with her husband
Scott (Luke Evans), who is a high profile doctor. What makes her fascination with this woman
all the more relevant is the fact that she lives next door to the house Rachel
used to call home, before her husband Tom (Justin Theroux) divorced her to
marry another woman named Anna (Rebecca Ferguson). So she passes the houses – day in and day out
– to look back at the life she used to have while comparing it to the life she
idolizes in her head. People like this
normally become alcoholics…and in all fairness, she is one herself. She is rarely seen sober or even so much as
speaking a coherent sentence. She blacks
out frequently and this will come to haunt her when Megan is found dead and she
is suspected of being the murderer.
This is where Taylor gets half of Hitchcock’s brilliant
formula right. Rachel is a mere observer
in her life and she has been accused of a horrific crime. A crime - I want to stress - she does not
remember committing. In fact, she
doesn’t remember much of anything the night in question. Her memory has many black holes and fuzzy
moments that are unclear. Her story is
unreliable and prone to scrutiny. This
is where Taylor gets Hitchcock’s formula completely wrong: We, as the audience,
need to know without a shadow of a doubt our protagonist is innocent. The rest of the world can believe she’s
guilty, but we have to know she is not.
As an audience we cannot fully support her. We question her memory. When key memories arise we question their
validity. She lies enough times that we
have every reason to believe Rachel is a possible suspect in the murder of this
young woman.
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CONSUMER ADVICE |
Parents, there is a lot of language, violence, sexuality/nudity, and there is that whole murder and affair thing going on. Recommended for ages 18 and up..
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