This never occurred to me before, but "train" movies are a really interesting sub-genre. You could program an entire two-week film festival of train movies, from comedies (The "Three Stooges" shorts, The General, The Darjeeling Limited) to suspense movies (James Bond, Strangers on a Train, Murder on the Orient Express, Runaway Train) and tons of others. It's the perfect setting for a movie: it's a limited space, but long -- for chases -- and it moves through the frame as opposed to sitting still like a hospital room or a warehouse. Plus, unlike an airplane, there are plenty of beautiful views going by outside. And so, if the train movie is a genre, it follows that it needs a solid genre director to add another potential classic to the list.

Brad Anderson (no relation to me, by the way) is such a director. Like Howard Hawks or Billy Wilder, he has been able to effortlessly leap between dark, genre films (Session 9, The Machinist) and romances (Next Stop Wonderland), and even weird combinations of the two (Happy Accidents). His films may not reach the pinnacles of great art, but each and every one of them represents a good, sturdy, entertaining example of sheer, joyful craftsmanship. Anderson's fifth feature (not counting his early, hard-to-find The Darien Gap) is Transsiberian, a film that I would be proud to add to the list of recommended train movies. The title train runs from Beijing to Moscow and crosses through some pretty remote, snowy terrain; it's a great place for something devious and sinister to happen. (The 1973 Peter Cushing / Christopher Lee film Horror Express took place on the same train!)

Anderson starts things with a bang as a Russian narcotics detective Ilya Grinko (Ben Kingsley) checks a crime scene after a drug deal gone bad; a frozen corpse sits bolt upright at a table. Then we jump to Bejing where the American married couple Roy (Woody Harrelson) and Jessie (Emily Mortimer) finishes up with a church mission. A happy, simple train nut, Roy wants to ride the famous Transsiberian Express before taking a plane back home. Jessie, an amateur photographer, goes along with him, but her sad eyes show a different kind of restlessness. We learn that she was once a bad girl who married Roy in the hopes of finding stability. In any event, Roy and Jessie receive an eerie warning -- a must in these kinds of movies -- from a guy who lost a toe by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then they meet an absurdly attractive young backpacking couple, Abby (Kate Mara) and Carlos (Eduardo Noriega).

Carlos shows Jessie his collection of "nesting dolls" and they kinda/sorta flirt a little. The train pulls away from its latest stop and Roy is no longer aboard. Anderson hints at some kind of foul play, and leaves Jessie to fret and worry about whether her husband is dead or alive. While waiting at the next stop, Jessie and Carlos hike to an abandoned church so that Jessie can photograph it. I'll have to stop there, as Anderson next uses expert sleight-of-hand to juggle drugs, murder, and various shades of villainy at the exact right times.

Even if you've seen lots of movies of this type and can figure out exactly what's going to happen, Anderson takes great pleasure in the pure form and execution of it. Moreover, Transsiberian is no mere copy. Just the fact that Jessie becomes the film's driving force rather than the man is a unique idea; she's far richer and more deeply developed than most thriller heroines, and Mortimer comes away with the film's most mesmerizing performance because of it (Kingsley's great Russian accent notwithstanding).

Transsiberian also uses its atmosphere to great effect. On the train, the characters fight for space and privacy, and any number of cranky Russians -- such as the tea lady -- are ready to bark at them for transgressions unknown. Anderson further ramps up the tension by filtering sugary American pop tunes ("Love Will Keep Us Together") into the cabins. This small, shoulder-to-shoulder space then explodes into the great, white open during the film's second half: snow, sky and cold, as well as spidery tree branches and crumbling, cavernous buildings. (As in Die Hard, the characters at one point must run barefoot through the unfriendly elements.)

Best of all, before any of this starts, the film spends at least a reel on -- get this -- developing the characters! By the time the trouble starts, we know all about Roy and Jessie, what they mean to each other, and what's at stake. Roy is more than just a clueless American tourist and train nerd and Jessie is more than a girl with a past; they surprise you with their humanity. Perhaps that's the reason Transsiberian works so well; the film's plot and suspense are all a matter of skill, but the characters continue to derail us.