Diagonaldi Very well executed

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Mehdi Hoffman There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

paxveritas Sleeping Car is a remake of the very good 1932 Rome Express with Conrad Veidt providing a much more sinister and intense Zurta in that one than Albert Lieven does in this remake - to his credit, though, Lieven does exude a debonair, charming sliminess, and I like both actors' widely different takes on the role.Lieven is actually better suited to the role of Zurta than Veidt would have been, since the tone of Sleeping Car is lighter, despite the biting satire overall. Rome Express, while absorbing, is by comparison somewhat flat and humorless. The action and dialogue in both are crisp, fast-paced without being frenzied; the subplots in Sleeping Car are more entertaining.Scottish actor Finlay Currie is in both. He's a fast-talking American show business promoter in Rome Express, and an overbearing author in the Trieste version. Urbane actor Paul Dupuis is more satisfying as the detective Jolif in Trieste. He has classier, funnier lines, and comes across as a three-dimensional sophisticate. In Rome Express, the role is a dull mish- mash attempted by Frank Vosper.Not to be missed is the fun performance by always-watchable Jean Kent, in full control of her role.Overall, Trieste corrects some of Rome's plot weaknesses, as well as adding life and humor, If you have a chance, watch both of them. They're both enjoyable.

lucyrfisher This is a remake of 1932's Rome Express, which is a far better film and stars the seedy and sinister Mr Dane Calthrop. This version is slow and plodding, and the humour is mainly heavy handed. There is an unnecessary subplot about an Englishman trying to explain English cookery to a French chef (I'm not going back to the Good Old Days - I remember that food).Best things about this version are David Tomlinson as the old schoolfriend who turns up inappositely, and Hugh Burden as the put-upon secretary. The McGuffin is a diary containing secrets that might start a war with an unspecified country, rather than a stolen painting. The adulterous couple are sexless as only the English can be. Jean Kent is always worth watching, but whoever designed her frumpy wardrobe should be condemned to selling long underwear in British Home Stores. That hat with the two horns - or are they ice cream cones? There is a subplot about two French girls who are smuggling model hats, and they are rather good, as is Bonar Colleano as a wisecracking American soldier. His wisecracks really are funny. His mate the birdwatcher is good, too.But overall - it's as stodgy as an English suet pudding.

Alex da Silva Albert Lieven (Zurta) and Jean Kent (Valya) pursue Alan Wheatley (Karl) aboard the Orient Express. The object of their attention is a diary which Lieven must recover and leave the train with before he reaches Trieste.The film needed to go in either the comedy direction or the thriller direction. As it goes, it combines both which is frustrating. The final moments on the train are quite shocking given the rather lame humour which we have been fed during the previous hour and forty minutes. The ending seems out of place in this otherwise frothy adventure.Most of the actors are irritating. They play comedy roles that never make you laugh, except once – lawyer Derek De Marney (George) comes out with a classic laugh-out-loud moment when he presents his 3 theories of how someone has ended up dead to policeman Paul Dupuis (Inspector Jolif). It's the best moment of the film and we re-winded it twice! The best in the cast are Lieven and Kent, who play it straight and provide the thriller part to the film – the reason to watch it. Some characters are actually completely superfluous to the story – the bird watcher, the GI, the French cook and the British cook. There are too many characters providing comedy parts.As a whole, you watch to see what happens but it gets boring and the Brits speak in that ridiculous posh way that makes you cringe, and it basically helps to portray them as twerps. Not what is required for a good thriller.

mchlwilson As an American, I am always interested to see how Americans are portrayed in European films, particularly films made prior to WWII and in the years immediately following it.The American in this film is portrayed as a vulgar contrast to the more sophisticated Europeans on board the train. He is a boozing, whistling, skirt-chasing Italian-American GI with a New York accent. (Why are they always from New York?) He is contrasted with the British passengers in two notable ways: First, his passion for the fairer sex is more overt and he comes across as wolfish in his pursuit of the young women in the film. This is contrasted with the discrete way in which the adulterous British couple on board the train are conducting their affair. When the two young French woman spurn his attempts to have a drinking party with them in their sleeping compartment, one says to him "We no longer wish to be liberated!" or words to that effect. This is a revealing statement about how the American military presence in postwar Europe was wearing thin the patience of Europeans.Second, the magazines this American GI reads are prominently displayed so as to ensure that the audience can see them. They are the standard popular American mediocrities of the day: Saturday Evening Post, Life Magazine, etc. This is contrasted with the more scholarly (albeit boring) readings of bird-watching Britisher sharing his compartment.Overall, the American in this film is the stereotypical boorish American so common in European films of this era. His portrayal, however, is not worse than Hollywood's stereotypes of Europeans.Please note that this is not a criticism, but rather an observation. Americans are not singled out for criticism; the film traffics in several stereotypes (the cheapness of Scotchmen, for example) and does so mainly in a vein of comedic irony. Even the British get their own send-ups in this film.