silvrdal
Even though I'm not Catholic, I weary of movies that bash them or portray their clergy or adherents in the worst possible light. 'Lasko: Death Train' is charmingly pro-Catholic, and a lot of fun.What could be more enjoyable for Catholic 9 to 15-year olds than to see kung-fu monks try and stop mercenaries from distributing a deadly stolen virus on a train of pilgrims bound for Lourdes to see the Pope? For what it is, this movie is relatively safe for young people -- only a smidgen of vulgar language, very little blood, and nothing prurient. Classroom teachers should feel pretty safe about showing it to students. The editing, music, cinematography, pacing, etc. are all very good. Okay, so the dialogue sounds like it came out a Japanese animated film at times, but kids won't care. There won't be anything new here for action flick fans, but what is here is handled carefully and done well.I liked it. Kids will enjoy it, too.
vibrationsofdoom
I totally enjoyed this movie. It's a shame when people nitpick over little details. Let's all remember WHY we go to the movies in the first place: we want to believe that there's a happy ending, that there's a crazy, action packed setting where lots of unbelievable things happen. Explosions galore in this one! Lots of cars getting blown up (how crazy was the timing on the hummer driving RIGHT past the truck that the villain had stuck a detonator to?), helicopters smashing into trains... It's a miracle the train survived as long as it did! The only thing that puzzles me is how a train has a "ventilation system" that runs throughout all the cars in sequence. Lots of great martial arts, and a rather interesting storyline. The strong arm of the Vatican? Interesting plot line and sorry, but you don't see a whole slew of movies based on "death trains." The characters were believable, and there were a few humorous moments, most notably the atypical heavyset monk, and the main villain calling himself Lucifer. If you want non stop action, this movie delivers; it has you on the edge of your seat until the very end. I highly recommend it.
lastliberal
I have to think hard here. have I seen another action film about a train that poses a threat to the world if it is not stopped? Is there another train film where all of the passengers are threatened? Hmm, I just watched Midnight Meat train and Night Train Murders. Those certainly had some real terror on the train.If you have seen Steven Segal's film where he tried to stop the bad guys on a train, you have seen this one. I seem to recall that Jean Claude even did one called Derailed. There was even another 2001 film called Death Train set in Mexico.We have been trained to death and I don't think we need another. This was mildly interesting. We did have the daughter of the devil dressed as a nun. A little nunsploitation there.There was also the cute kid angle, and the soldier who was tired of war and became a monk. Didn't Rambo do that, too? I enjoyed Stephan Bieker, but that was the only character that interested me. There was good stunt work, lots of explosions and some good martial arts action, but that doesn't compensate for a poor script, and we've seen it all beforeSecret agents for God? Give me a break.
sealyme01
It's not a terrible film. It just isn't that good either. The constant slow-motion throughout every action sequence was incredibly frustrating. The scenes were a bit disjointed at time: just as I thought a scene was actually going to add something useful to the story, it'd jump to another little snippet. In saying that though there were some entertaining moments and hey, who doesn't find kung-fu religion-protecting monks entertaining?Other than being a little frustrating with just how much better the movie could've been given the reasonable-ish story line and the odd explosion, not too bad a movie. Worth watching if you're procrastinating from doing more useful things
AD
