Transit, 2012.
Directed by Antonio Negret.
Starring Jim Caviezel, James Frain, Elisabeth Röhm, Diora Baird, Sterling Knight, Ryan Donowho, Jake Cherry and Harold Perrineau.
SYNOPSIS:
A gang of bank robbers use a suburban family as unwitting couriers to move millions of dollars of stolen money past a police roadbloack.
What happens when four bank robbers put their stolen money in with the luggage of a family on vacation and then have to try and hunt them down to get it back? Well, you get a pretty mediocre action movie.
Four bank robbers – Marek (James Frain), Robyn (Elisabeth Rohm), Evers (Ryan Donowho) and Losada (Harold Perrineau) – steal $4 million off an armored truck. They plan on heading out to the coast to hop on a boat and go their separate ways. Only problem is they run into a roadblock setup by the police to try and find out who stole the money. An opportunity arises when they see a family, lead by Jim Caviezel, with a lot of luggage on top of their car. By putting the money with the family they can easily get by the roadblock. The problem is the gang now have to track down the family and get the money back before they find out they’ve got it.
The problem with Transit is that the filmmakers play it too safe. Instead of trying to do something original or even something with a little suspense they do everything we’ve seen before in countless other action movies and it just all feels too familiar. Something else that just took me out of the movie was that these were some of the dumbest villains I’ve ever seen. Some of the choices they would make were just ridiculous and at times unintentionally funny.
Another problem here is that most of the acting is very weak. Jim Caviezel is pretty decent in the lead role. He’s a believable father figure and I think he played the part well. James Frain is great as the main villain Marek and the always reliable Harold Perrineau does fine work here too. Everyone else involved either didn’t seem like they were trying or they were just giving a really bad performance. Diora Baird as the mother here just didn’t do it for me. She was at least trying but her performance just came out bad altogether. The biggest flaw in the cast comes from Sterling Knight who plays the oldest of two sons in the family. Knight is laughably bad in almost every scene and is far from believable.
Not everything here is bad. There are some decent action scenes, including a death I did not see coming, and the pace of the movie is perfectly fine. It just felt like it could have been so much better because it does have an interesting premise. The execution just isn’t there and makes this somewhat of a disappointment.
Flickering Myth Rating: Film ★ / Movie ★ ★
Jake Peffer
Originally published July 5, 2012. Updated April 11, 2018.
