Especially terrible disasters are called "train wrecks." This movie shows us why. Its needlessly convoluted plot creates a movie which at times transcends mere stupidity to be a painful experience, despite the "name" actors and actresses which it features.
This film's significance is probably as a footnote to the history of Rob Lowe's comeback (it originally aired just before the premiere of "The West Wing," if I recall correctly, and on NBC, the same US television network as "West Wing").
I originally gave this turkey a "7" rating, but having watched it twice since (SciFi Network likes to play it on national holidays next to "The Day After," please don't ask me why... ) I can't see why I gave it such an undeservedly high rating. It's more like a "3."
"Needlessly convoluted" how, you ask? Well, how about Soviet nuclear weapons turning up as scrap in an American boxcar - when the sleazy scrap dealer could have made more money billing the US Department of Energy to transport them according to the regulations for such things (in the real-life Nunn-Lugar nuclear threat reduction program, the US Enrichment Corporation buys just the plutonium, not nuclear weapons - the Russians decommission their nuclear weapons in-country and ship us the special nuclear material). Even then, plutonium travels under heavily armed escort in this country - on armored semis, not trains, and there's never a whole bomb's worth (a "formula quantity") of weapons-grade fissile on the roads of the US at any given time.
Whoppers like crates full of assembled Soviet nukes traveling as cargo inside civilian boxcars don't as much harm as obliterate willing suspension of disbelief in the audience.
The acting is undistinguished - of course, for his comeback, all Rob Lowe had to do is stay out of trouble with the young ladies off camera during filming, but he put in a decent performance - nothing to write home about. But no one really shines in this film - Edward Herrmann gave better performances during his commercials for Dodge around the same time.
The two-part nature of this presentation (it originally was a two-part miniseries on NBC) also causes problems - the movie shifts from being a mildly plausible sci-fi thriller in Part One to a survivalist cliff-hanger adventure (still not very plausible) and the psychological subplots detract from the pace of the production badly.
I can't recommend this film for anything but background noise while one's busy doing other things. If you pay full attention to what's happening in this turkey, you actually enjoy it less. "Atomic Train" is an embarrassment to all involved in its creation.
This film's significance is probably as a footnote to the history of Rob Lowe's comeback (it originally aired just before the premiere of "The West Wing," if I recall correctly, and on NBC, the same US television network as "West Wing").
I originally gave this turkey a "7" rating, but having watched it twice since (SciFi Network likes to play it on national holidays next to "The Day After," please don't ask me why... ) I can't see why I gave it such an undeservedly high rating. It's more like a "3."
"Needlessly convoluted" how, you ask? Well, how about Soviet nuclear weapons turning up as scrap in an American boxcar - when the sleazy scrap dealer could have made more money billing the US Department of Energy to transport them according to the regulations for such things (in the real-life Nunn-Lugar nuclear threat reduction program, the US Enrichment Corporation buys just the plutonium, not nuclear weapons - the Russians decommission their nuclear weapons in-country and ship us the special nuclear material). Even then, plutonium travels under heavily armed escort in this country - on armored semis, not trains, and there's never a whole bomb's worth (a "formula quantity") of weapons-grade fissile on the roads of the US at any given time.
Whoppers like crates full of assembled Soviet nukes traveling as cargo inside civilian boxcars don't as much harm as obliterate willing suspension of disbelief in the audience.
The acting is undistinguished - of course, for his comeback, all Rob Lowe had to do is stay out of trouble with the young ladies off camera during filming, but he put in a decent performance - nothing to write home about. But no one really shines in this film - Edward Herrmann gave better performances during his commercials for Dodge around the same time.
The two-part nature of this presentation (it originally was a two-part miniseries on NBC) also causes problems - the movie shifts from being a mildly plausible sci-fi thriller in Part One to a survivalist cliff-hanger adventure (still not very plausible) and the psychological subplots detract from the pace of the production badly.
I can't recommend this film for anything but background noise while one's busy doing other things. If you pay full attention to what's happening in this turkey, you actually enjoy it less. "Atomic Train" is an embarrassment to all involved in its creation.