'The Girl on the Train' is morose and predictable
It was inevitable that a movie would be made of the 2015 mega-bestselling Paula Hawkins mystery novel 鈥淭he Girl on the Train,鈥� but did聽the movie have to be so morose? A central dictum of any mystery thriller is聽this: Make your protagonists, especially your villains, worth caring about.聽鈥淭he Girl on the Train,鈥� directed by Tate Taylor from a script by Erin聽Cressida Wilson, falls down on the job.
Emily Blunt is cast as Rachel Watson, who spends her days commuting聽aimlessly to and from New York City from Westchester County, where聽her ex-husband, Tom (Justin Theroux), and his glossy new wife, Anna聽(Rebecca Ferguson), live with their new baby. Rachel can鈥檛 keep from聽harassing this couple, whose house lies on the same river route as the house聽shared by tough-as-nails Scott (Luke Evans) and his even glossier mate,聽Megan (Haley Bennett). Rachel keeps tabs on all of them, and when a聽murder is committed, her creepy, boozy voyeurism may hold the key to its聽solution.
Blunt, who can be quite marvelous in movies, spends most of the film聽looking haggard and sozzled; the rest of the cast, with the exception聽of Allison Janney as a police investigator, is dull. The plot twists, such as聽they are, are garbled and predictable. Since I didn鈥檛 much like it either, I聽probably shouldn鈥檛 say that this film is no 鈥淕one Girl.鈥� But I鈥檒l say it聽anyway.聽Grade: C (Rated聽R for violence, sexual content, language and nudity.)
