The Midnight Meat Train (2008) starring Bradley Cooper, Leslie Bibb, Brooke Shields, Vinnie Jones directed by Ryûhei Kitamura Movie Review

The Midnight Meat Train (2008)   3/53/53/53/53/5


Bradley Cooper in The Midnight Meat Train (2008)

Slaughtered

Leon (Bradley Cooper) finds himself pushed to really capture the grit of the city by gallery owner Susan Hoff (Brooke Shields) and it leads him to start prowling the streets and subway at nights which is where he becomes obsessed with Mahogany (Vinnie Jones) a butcher who kills his victims on the late night train. When he shows the police some photos of what he thinks is evidence they not only disregard them but become suspicious of Leon himself whilst his girlfriend Maya (Leslie Bibb) becomes concerned by how obsessed he has become. But when Leon after another late night excursion finds himself knocked out and then coming too on the floor of a warehouse his only hope is that Maya will track him down somehow.

Blur, it is how I feel about "The Midnight Meat Train" as whilst some things worked for me other things seriously don't and before the first 30 minutes were up I was considering what else I could have been watching. In truth "The Midnight Meat Train" feels like two ideas which lack the connective tissue to make them work together and that is why once it had shown its cards early on it didn't have anything else.

Vinnie Jones in The Midnight Meat Train (2008)

So what do I mean? Well to start with we have Leon this enthusiastic photographer who for his art is willing to walk the streets of the city alone at night and even cockily confront a gang who attack a woman, not before he has got the photo he wants! If you ignore the over the top behaviour of Brooke Shields as a man eating gallery owner it is okay. But when Leon decides to follow the man he thinks is a killer it is too much to be believable.

But then we have the violence of Mahogany as he slaughters his victims on the tube, smashing their heads so hard with a tenderising hammer their eyes pop out. It is a CGI gore fest this is so over the top it doesn't work alongside the investigative journalist bit. And when it tries to connect it all together with police who become suspicious of Leon and a girlfriend trying to make sense of what has happened it quite frankly loses you. Having said that, if you are a fan of extreme CGI violence as well as Vinnie Jones playing it silent but deadly then you might get some kicks from this.

What this all boils down to is that "The Midnight Meat Train" has some good ideas but it doesn't come together for me especially when it comes to the over the top graphic nature of the violence which ends up coming across as fake.


LATEST REVIEWS