This film is without doubt the worst film I have ever seen, and if you think that this claim is mere hyperbole then I implore you to see it for yourself, for once you have every film you see thereafter will seem better no matter how cringe-inducing the acting or nonsensical the plot. Night Train to Venice literally has to be seen to be believed. The so-called plot sees Hugh Grant, who should be thoroughly ashamed of himself for agreeing to appear in this drivel no matter how much he needed the money, boarding the Orient Express to Venice to take a manuscript he has written exposing a neo-Nazi movement to a publishing house. However, he is being followed by a group of badly-dubbed Nazis who are as camp as Christmas and about as terrifying as tinsel.
Speaking of Christmas, Grant's laughable dialogue where he states that he hopes to receive books rather than socks next year because "I'm an intellectual", is one of the few hilarious high points, though for all the wrong reasons, and leads to the first of the film's many soft-core sex scenes, interpolated with the sight of a transvestite miming to Edith Piaf. This is just one of many examples of just how random and bizarre this film is, it's as if no one involved put any effort into making it coherent. Questions are asked but are never answered, and if you are hoping for an ending where the whole thing comes together and makes sense then think again, you'll be left scratching your head long after the sight of Hugh Grant having sex for the umpteenth time has disappeared from the screen, and not because the film is complex or in any way clever, it just seems to have been thrown together without any of the filmmakers caring about plot or substance.
What exactly is the point of having Malcolm MacDowell grimace at the screen in slow motion in every scene? Why are so many scenes interrupted by shots of the train going past, as if we hadn't worked out yet that the film is set on a train? The actual script can only have been about seven pages long and the director has cruelly padded it out with naff slow-motion and totally unnecessary establishing shots. If you watch this film, prepare yourself for some (unintended by the 'filmamkers') laughs but most of all to be baffled and bored by this unbelievably awful movie.
Speaking of Christmas, Grant's laughable dialogue where he states that he hopes to receive books rather than socks next year because "I'm an intellectual", is one of the few hilarious high points, though for all the wrong reasons, and leads to the first of the film's many soft-core sex scenes, interpolated with the sight of a transvestite miming to Edith Piaf. This is just one of many examples of just how random and bizarre this film is, it's as if no one involved put any effort into making it coherent. Questions are asked but are never answered, and if you are hoping for an ending where the whole thing comes together and makes sense then think again, you'll be left scratching your head long after the sight of Hugh Grant having sex for the umpteenth time has disappeared from the screen, and not because the film is complex or in any way clever, it just seems to have been thrown together without any of the filmmakers caring about plot or substance.
What exactly is the point of having Malcolm MacDowell grimace at the screen in slow motion in every scene? Why are so many scenes interrupted by shots of the train going past, as if we hadn't worked out yet that the film is set on a train? The actual script can only have been about seven pages long and the director has cruelly padded it out with naff slow-motion and totally unnecessary establishing shots. If you watch this film, prepare yourself for some (unintended by the 'filmamkers') laughs but most of all to be baffled and bored by this unbelievably awful movie.