The Girl on the Train

THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN (Tate Taylor, 2016)

When taking the train to and from Manhattan, Rachel (Emily Blunt) sees Megan (Haley Bennett) and her husband at their home and imagines the idealized life they must have. One day on her commute in THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN, she catches Megan with what appears to be another man. Witnessing this sends her speculation reeling when Megan goes missing and is feared to be dead.

Rachel may have played an active role in the young woman’s disappearance, though. Her drinking is known to lead to blackouts, and she engages in stalker-like behavior with Megan’s nanny Anna (Rebecca Ferguson), who is the woman Rachel’s ex-husband had an affair with and then married and had a child with. The more Rachel inserts herself into the case, the more her own motivations come into question.

The novel and film of THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN have been positioned as successors to GONE GIRL, the lurid yarn also about a missing suburban wife. In both cases the comparison may be invited but isn’t earned. While GONE GIRL grooved on a sick and funny energy about it, THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN aims for a strained seriousness that doesn’t fit with the rather ridiculous twists and turns the story takes. Despite the attempts to create unreliability with its primary character, the mystery never becomes particularly compelling. The nonlinear structure is the biggest hindrance, tossing out revelations and questioning what is known as director Tate Taylor is trying to organize it all for viewers to follow. The shifting perspectives out of the gate and slow ramp up to the investigation don’t help with putting the mystery in motion.

THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN falls flat as a whodunit but is intriguing, if spotty, in looking at the roles women are expected to play when of marriageable and childbearing ages. How they react when things don’t go according to plan, they don’t want to follow the script, or they find the dream unsatisfying are more fertile territory for the film to explore. The emotional undercurrents are more credible than the veers in the plot. For as sensational as the crime at the center is, Taylor nicely underplays moments, like the reveal of Rachel’s alcoholism, which is suggested before the evidence is shown. The problem is that THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN is better in the margins than it is in the text.

Grade: C+

Get On Up

GET ON UP (Tate Taylor, 2014)

Like many other biopics GET ON UP assembles the highlights from its subject’s life, but in a twist, this film about James Brown (Chadwick Boseman) shuffles the chronology of key events. Screenwriters Jez and John-Henry Butterworth keep the story from settling into a predictable rise-and-fall rut, but their structure also resists picking up any dramatic momentum. It’s like a greatest hits CD that’s not sequenced according to when the songs were released or any logical order. It permits making connections across decades that might not have seemed apparent otherwise, but the groove struggles to be sustained from track to track.

GET ON UP tracks the life of the influential singer from his childhood in Augusta, Georgia. First his mother (Viola Davis) abandons him, and then his father (Lennie James) takes off, leaving him at the whorehouse Aunt Honey (Octavia Spencer) operates. While in prison at age 17 for stealing a suit out of a car, he meets Bobby Byrd (Nelsan Ellis), who’s performing for the inmates with his gospel group. Bobby’s parents help James get out by giving him an address to call home.

James joins Bobby’s group and gradually takes over as the star attraction of what comes to be known as The Famous Flames. They play on the chitlin’ circuit and attract the interest of a record company in Cincinnati. In their end they really just want James. He tries to keep the rest of the band as salaried employees, but the news doesn’t sit well with them, although Bobby continues to work with James during his lengthy career.

Early in GET ON UP Brown is wielding a shotgun and putting the fear of God in a group meeting at his strip mall in 1988. One of them used his private restroom, and he’s not happy about it one bit. When a woman fesses up to being the guilty party, he tells her, “You did right by yourself. There ain’t no other way to live.” It’s the defining statement in a film that shows Brown always looking out for number one, often to the detriment of the people around him. He fines band members for infractions and does not take kindly to being challenged. He pushes back against the concert promotion system so that he can keep more of the gate. James Brown’s early years did not feature anyone who put him first, which explains why he came to prioritize his interests to a fault as a guiding principle, yet the tragedy of his success by these means also led him to a lonely place even if surrounded by people.

The plentiful musical performance scenes keep the proceedings lively. Boseman brings swagger, charisma, and toughness in a magnetic piece of acting as the soul singer. Playing a well-known individual, especially one with a larger than life personality, runs the risk of mimicry, but Boseman brings the human dimension to the legend, thus avoiding merely imitating his moves and voice like a sketch comedian.

Revisiting such a broad portion of Brown’s life makes it impossible to cover everything. The unseemlier parts of his history and legal tangles are given short shrift, most notably. GET ON UP does a fine job of reminding how influential Brown has been on popular music, but in trying to understand the man it comes across like a radio edit: safe for mass consumption.

Grade: C+