A Transsiberian Film Before the Beach

I was at the Nantucket Film Festival this past weekend to screen Meerkat Media's film Every Third Bite. While there I only caught one film at the actual festival (it seemed a better use of my time to enjoy the outdoors). The film I saw was Brad Anderson's Transsiberian. I've always been a fan of Anderson and usually enjoy his intelligent and uncommon approach to commonplace genres. Perhaps it's been a while since I saw one of his films and in that time my viewing preferences have changed, but I found Transsiberian to be somewhat disappointing in a few ways.

1) Continual flashbacks to remind you of the importance of a moment. Over and over as the story moved forward, Anderson thought it necessary to flashback to the past moment that made the present moment significant. In no way was this needed, when the inspector asks to see the main characters camera after she has lied to him we of course remember (or should) that there is a picture on her camera that proves her story false. I resented him needing to show me. Also, he should simply trust himself as a storyteller, all the information we as an audience need is there

2) Gratuitous use of torture. I found the scene where the main characters confront a woman who has been tortured almost completely without merit. It didn't add to my tension with the story and just made me uncomfortable with the images on the screen. Jonathan Rosenbaum has a nice little piece he wrote about torture in films, perhaps Anderson should have read it :
http://blogs.chicagoreader.com/film/2006/12/14/avoiding-movies-about-torture/

That being said, there are some extremely beautiful images in the film, good performances from Kinglsey, Mortimer and Harrison and some truly thrilling moments. I was definitely on the edge of my seat for parts of the film. Also, the "theater" I saw the film in was actually just a room and the daylight was peaking in in a very real way and the speakers had ridiculous feedback. So it should be noted that the technical ridiculousness that I couldn't stop thinking about when the film started escaped my mind by 20 minutes in- which obviously means the film worked on some level.

Ahh well. I did enjoy my weekend of beaching, eating good food, and the gentle breeze that evened out the sun as I read.