BrendanW 
Sometimes a lead performance alone can cause an entire production to sink or swim. It doesn’t happen very often but it’s something that I have noticed from time to time. Here is a film in which Emily Blunt takes out the rug from under everyone else’s feet. Blunt is an excellent actress anyway but I was not expecting her to go to the measures and depths that she does with this role. Even though she has already impressed with Sicario, Looper, and even The Devil Wears Prada this is definitely the best acting from her that I have ever seen. …oh yeah, the movie? It was pretty good too.
The film’s plot is a little complicated but at the same time it’s not too hard to figure out where you are once some time has gone by. We follow Rachel Watson (Emily Blunt), an alcoholic and divorcee after her ex-husband Tom (Justin Theroux) decided to cheat on her with their realtor, Anna (Rebecca Ferguson). Every day, Rachel takes the train through town and likes to make up a backstory for a young couple she always spots out the window – Scott (Luke Evans) and Megan Hipwell (Haley Bennett). However, one day when she blacks out after drunkenly ranting at Anna at a park, Rachel hears that Megan has gone missing and vows to help put the pieces together and help Scott find out who’s behind it all the while that she is one of the biggest suspects.
The way in which this film tends to work best is when it is presented as a straight-forward mystery thriller. The writing and the plot itself is fairly strong and it constantly had me guessing as to what the big reveal would be while I watched it unfold. This isn’t something like 88 Minutes where everyone suddenly becomes suspicious when something goes down as everyone behaves like their character should act as we have been shown earlier in the film. I know that sounds like a simple concept but unfortunately, a lot of films fail to accomplish this seemingly easy feat. The writing is where a bit of the problems lie though as I had a few gripes with the structure of the story. Doing the constant flashbacks was helpful at times but at other moments it felt like a few of them were unnecessarily padding the film. Still, I feel like it was a very solid effort to make everyone as fully-formed as possible.
The acting in this film begins and ends with Emily Blunt. I thought Sicario was going to be the height of her prowess but here she takes a character with not a lot of likeable qualities and plays against type. She is worn down, world-weary and yes, an alcoholic. She doesn’t play this as a typical glamourous actress; Blunt definitely looks the part and it appears as if the actress hadn’t slept in days before they rolled film on her scenes. It is also interesting to have an unreliable main character like this who we follow throughout the film and listen to but at the same time, we still have our doubts about the information that she is stating. A distant second place would probably be Luke Evans as Scott. Everybody else just kinda shows up and reads their lines. No one is bad per se but there is honestly nothing else notable I can say about the rest of the acting.
At times it feels like we are just kinda zig-zagging around the plot to waste time until the ending and the reveal so of course it helps that there is such a strong lead performance and a decent script. You shouldn’t discount the directing of Tate Taylor either though. Taylor knows how to film emotional moments and one shot in particular of Blunt holding a child is particularly haunting just in its simple effectiveness. Another one that is simple yet effective based on some very basic camera moves is the way in which we learn the fate of one of the characters. I will not say who it is but the brutality of the moment is done in such a cold and calculating manner that it makes it even more effective. I also enjoy the stuff on the train as we see Blunt struggle to hold on to her own sanity as a sea of faces (in some cases – recurring faces) just whip by her. We see a man that seems to be everywhere that she is while we also see a young woman with a child decide to move seats after noticing a bottle of liquor in Blunt’s purse. Her interactions with other characters including Tom and Anna are intense as you never really quite get a grip on how far she will go in terms of violence or anger. We are shown flashbacks to exemplify the extent of how far she can go so it’s always a possible notion that she might just go so far as to be unredeemable.
It’s quite a good film and I really hope Emily Blunt doesn’t get overlooked come awards season.
*** ½
Rating System:
* (Brutal; the worst rating)
** (Some elements keep it from being awful but still not very good)
*** (Completely watchable; a rental as old-timers might say)
**** (Great film with a few things here and there keeping it from being perfect)
***** (Flawless; a true achievement)
