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''Last Passenger'' is a 2013 British
suspense thriller film Suspense is a state of mental uncertainty, anxiety, being undecided, or being doubtful. In a dramatic work, suspense is the anticipation of the outcome of a plot or of the solution to an uncertainty, puzzle, or mystery, particularly as it affec ...
directed by
Omid Nooshin Omid Nooshin (02 May 1974 - 15 January 2018) was an English film director and writer. He was best known for his debut independent feature film '' Last Passenger''. Early life Nooshin was born in Guildford, Surrey, in 1974, the son of Hoshyar N ...
. Starring
Dougray Scott Stephen Dougray Scott (born 25 November 1965) is a Scottish actor. He has appeared in the films ''Ever After'' (1998), '' Mission: Impossible 2'' (2000), ''Enigma'' (2001), ''Hitman'' (2007), and ''My Week with Marilyn'' (2011). Early life Sc ...
,
Kara Tointon Kara Louise Tointon (born 5 August 1983) is an English actress, known for portraying the role of Dawn Swann in the BBC soap opera ''EastEnders''. In 2010, she won the BBC competition series ''Strictly Come Dancing'', and in 2015, she appeared as ...
and
Iddo Goldberg Iddo Goldberg ( he, עדו גולדברג; born 5 August 1975) is an Israeli-British actor born in Israel. He is known for his roles as Ben in ''Secret Diary of a Call Girl'', Freddie Thorne in ''Peaky Blinders'', Isaac Walton in '' Salem'' and ...
, this film follows the man; a doctor and a widower, and their commuters' efforts to stop the train after it was discovered to have been hijacked by an unknown, mysterious driver.


Plot

In 2004, Lewis Shaler is a doctor and widower heading home with his young son Max on a late-night train from
London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
heading to . Max accidentally causes fellow passenger Sarah Barwell to spill coffee on her coat, prompting Shaler to apologize to Barwell. The interaction is the beginning of a romantic connection between the two. Later, while the train is stationary, Shaler notices an unidentifiable man wearing a high-visibility jacket tampering with the train's brakes. As the train begins to move again he sees another man crawling across the tracks. On investigation, Shaler discovers the guard has vanished. Soon after, as the train approaches Shaler's home station, Barwell kisses Shaler and asks him to call her, however Shaler is distracted by the train bypassing his stop. Shaler tries to contact the driver on the intercom, but the driver only speaks to ask how many passengers are left on board and hangs up. Shaler and fellow passenger Peter Carmichael pull numerous emergency brake cords to no effect. It dawns on Shaler and Carmichael that the driver intends to kill himself and his passengers. Along with fellow passenger Jan Klimowski (who originally attracted suspicion as he is under the influence), they attempt to stop the train using the rear handbrake; initially with success but is later thwarted when the driver speeds up, overwhelming it. After the train continues past , the train rams a vehicle at a level crossing, instantly killing the occupants. The trauma causes one of the six remaining passengers to suffer a heart attack, and Shaler is unable to revive her. Klimowski and Shaler then attempt to break into the driver's cab using fire extinguishers. They breach the first door, but the second is too reinforced and the driver retaliates by continuously sounding the loud horn to fend them off. They also discover the guard's body, previously slain by the driver. Klimowski attempts to uncouple the train carriages by climbing outside, but this dangerous gambit is cut short by an approaching single-track tunnel. Shaler saves Klimowski by pulling him back on board seconds before the train enters the tunnel. It transpires that the police have laid an ineffective blockade out of sandbags which only momentarily stops the train, and none of the passengers can open the doors due to the tunnel's narrow clearance. Suspecting that they are now close to a destructive collision with the Hastings station buffers, Shaler creates an improvised explosive using the last remaining fire extinguisher. The explosion destroys the floor panels, allowing the rest to access and detach the coupler, but Carmichael accidentally falls through the gap and is killed instantly. The burning carriages separate as they speed through a suburban station where police officers watch helplessly. Shaler is left on the front car whilst Klimowski and Barwell manage to stop their carriage with the rear handbrake. With the train continuing to burn around him, Shaler takes a moment to compose himself, before running and leaping from the carriage as it explodes. It dislodges the driver's hand from the
dead man's switch A dead man's switch (see alternative names) is a switch that is designed to be activated or deactivated if the human operator becomes incapacitated, such as through death, loss of consciousness, or being bodily removed from control. Originally a ...
(and probably killing him) which immediately engages backup brakes. The remains of the train finally screech to a stop just in front of the camera and shows the headlight going off for good. Shaler is discovered alive and conscious by Barwell, Max and Klimowski while a helicopter circles overhead. The identity of the driver and his motivations for committing a murder-suicide are left unknown. It is also unknown whether Shaler and Barwell went off together or went their separate ways.


Cast

*
Dougray Scott Stephen Dougray Scott (born 25 November 1965) is a Scottish actor. He has appeared in the films ''Ever After'' (1998), '' Mission: Impossible 2'' (2000), ''Enigma'' (2001), ''Hitman'' (2007), and ''My Week with Marilyn'' (2011). Early life Sc ...
as Lewis Shaler *
Kara Tointon Kara Louise Tointon (born 5 August 1983) is an English actress, known for portraying the role of Dawn Swann in the BBC soap opera ''EastEnders''. In 2010, she won the BBC competition series ''Strictly Come Dancing'', and in 2015, she appeared as ...
as Sarah Barwell *
Iddo Goldberg Iddo Goldberg ( he, עדו גולדברג; born 5 August 1975) is an Israeli-British actor born in Israel. He is known for his roles as Ben in ''Secret Diary of a Call Girl'', Freddie Thorne in ''Peaky Blinders'', Isaac Walton in '' Salem'' and ...
as Jan Klimowski * David Schofield as Peter Carmichael *
Lindsay Duncan Lindsay Vere Duncan (born 7 November 1950) is a Scottish actress. On stage, she has won two Olivier Awards (for ''Les Liaisons Dangereuses'' and ''Private Lives'') and a Tony Award (for ''Private Lives''). She has starred in several plays by H ...
as Elaine Middleton *Joshua Kaynama as Max Shaler *Samuel Geker-Kawle as Train guard


Production


Development

In an interview about the film in the March 2013 issue of Vérité Magazine, Omid Nooshin said "There's a mythic resonance, being trapped in the Belly of the Whale, but there's also an existential dimension, hurtling towards the end of the line, towards certain death. I'm drawn to the work of anthropologist
Ernest Becker Ernest Becker (September 27, 1924 – March 6, 1974) was an American cultural anthropologist and author of the 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, '' The Denial of Death''. Biography Early life Ernest Becker was born in Springfield, Massachuset ...
who posited that mortality buffering actions constituted a kind of science of human behaviour." After receiving development backing from the
UK Film Council The UK Film Council (UKFC) was a non-departmental public body set up in 2000 to develop and promote the film industry in the UK. It was constituted as a private company limited by guarantee, owned by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and ...
, the script was voted onto the 2008 Brit List, an industry compiled ranking of the best unproduced screenplays in the UK. However, taking the film into production required a "heroic effort" according to executive producer Kwesi Dickson. Consequently, Nooshin directed and co-produced along with producers Zack Winfield, Ado Yoshizaki and Dickson a £500 trailer to attract potential backers, filming on a heritage train on loan from the Bluebell Railway in Sussex. Todd Brown, founder of Twitch.com, wrote in March 2011 "Omid Nooshin's Last Passenger does not yet exist but it will soon. At least it will if the microbudget promo he shot for the film has anything to say about it," The trailer was instrumental in attracting the backing of
Pathé Pathé or Pathé Frères (, styled as PATHÉ!) is the name of various French people, French businesses that were founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France starting in 1896. In the early 1900s, Pathé became the world's largest ...
, the
British Film Institute The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, ...
and
Pinewood Studios Pinewood Studios is a British film and television studio located in the village of Iver Heath, England. It is approximately west of central London. The studio has been the base for many productions over the years from large-scale films to te ...
. Last Passenger went on to strong pre-sales at the 2011
Cannes Film Market Cannes ( , , ; oc, Canas) is a city located on the French Riviera. It is a commune located in the Alpes-Maritimes department, and host city of the annual Cannes Film Festival, Midem, and Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The ci ...
, the business counterpart of the
Cannes Film Festival The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...
. Along with the £500 trailer, another key element which attracted distributors was the attachment of Dougray Scott to the lead role. Scott said of the script "It reminded me of a
Hitchcock Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featur ...
thriller where Hitchcock used to invest in the characters, so whatever happened in the story, you really cared about them because he’d spent the time for you, the audience, to get to know them." Part of Scott's character research involved training in
CPR Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is an emergency procedure consisting of chest compressions often combined with artificial ventilation in an effort to manually preserve intact brain function until further measures are taken to restore sponta ...
at a hospital in
Brighton Brighton () is a seaside resort and one of the two main areas of the City of Brighton and Hove in the county of East Sussex, England. It is located south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze A ...
.


Pre-Production

After realising that his preferred option of filming on
35mm 35 mm may refer to: * 135 film, a type of still photography format commonly referred to as 35 mm film * 35 mm movie film, a type of motion picture film stock * 35MM 35 mm may refer to: * 135 film, a type of still photography format ...
wasn't affordable, Nooshin wanted to achieve the most cinematic look possible using digital cameras, and the
Arri Alexa The Arri Alexa (stylised as ΛLEXΛ) is a digital motion picture camera system developed by Arri. First introduced in April 2010, the camera was Arri's first major transition into digital cinematography after previous efforts such as the Arr ...
soon become his preferred choice. At this time the 4x3 Alexa had not been released, meaning Last Passenger would have to be shot at x2 anamorphic lenses on a 16x9 sensor. The film therefore became one of the first and only productions to use 2:1 anamorphics on a 16:9 sensor for a film that would be released theatrically. Director of Photography Angus Hudson and Nooshin opted for the Cooke Xtal Express range of anamorphic lenses, originally spherical lenses from the 1930s that had been re-housed and modified with anamorphic elements in the 1980s. The decision to use anamorphic owed as much to storytelling as to aesthetics. For budget reasons, Last Passenger used a real train as its set, but one drawback of this approach was that the crew couldn't remove any walls and therefore the camera would have to remain close to the actors. Nooshin wanted as much peripheral vision as possible to define space without losing intimacy with the actors, and anamorphic allowed this within the limited space. A custom made overhead camera dolly was built using the carriage's luggage holders. The dolly allowed for smooth camera motion throughout the carriages.


Filming

Principal photography Principal photography is the phase of producing a film or television show in which the bulk of shooting takes place, as distinct from the phases of pre-production and post-production. Personnel Besides the main film personnel, such as actor ...
began at Shepperton Studios' 'H' Stage, in September 2011, and lasted just 26 days, with further pick ups on the
007 stage The Albert R. Broccoli 007 Stage is one of the largest sound stages in the world. It is located at Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, England, and named after James Bond film producer Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli. The stage was ori ...
at Pinewood studios. The film was set on-board two Class 421 “4-CIG” EMU carriages (numbers 76747 and 62385 from unit 1399). Despite being part of an electric train, artistic licence was taken and the carriages were portrayed as diesel powered for the purpose of the storyline. The film is set in 2004 when 'slam door' trains were still in service. Two 421 carriages, 120 feet long and weighing 90 tonnes, were delivered to Shepperton Studios and mounted on off-set hydraulic rams. Instead of using the more common technique of green screen to create the illusion of movement outside the train's windows, Nooshin designed a six screen system of
rear projection Rear projection (background projection, process photography, etc.) is one of many in-camera effects cinematic techniques in film production for combining foreground performances with pre-filmed backgrounds. It was widely used for many years in d ...
, maintaining
motion parallax Parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight and is measured by the angle or semi-angle of inclination between those two lines. Due to foreshortening, nearby objects ...
in a near 360 degree view, something only now viable with
DSLRs A digital single-lens reflex camera (digital SLR or DSLR) is a digital camera that combines the optics and the mechanisms of a single-lens reflex camera with a digital imaging sensor. The reflex design scheme is the primary difference between ...
and digital projectors. Some sequences however required a more complex combination of techniques. The '
train surfing Train surfing (also known as train hopping or train hitching) is the act of riding on the outside of a moving train, tram or another rail transport. In a number of countries, the term train hopping is used synonymously with freight hopping, whi ...
' scene towards the end of the film was shot in four different locations over six months - the main bulk on Shepperton's 'H' Stage, pick-ups on Pinewood's Bond Stage and on the
Bluebell Railway The Bluebell Railway is an heritage line almost entirely in West Sussex in England, except for Sheffield Park which is in East Sussex. It is managed by the Bluebell Railway Preservation Society. It uses steam trains which operate between an ...
who are owners of a 423 unit (3417 "Gordon Pettitt") which is similar design to the 421, and background plates shot from a freight train. The Last Passenger production team visited
Kent & East Sussex Railway The Kent and East Sussex Railway (K&ESR) refers to both a historical private railway company in Kent and East Sussex in England, as well as a heritage railway currently running on part of the route of the historical company. Historical compa ...
in November 2011 to shoot the carriage fire scenes at the end of the film. The level crossing crash scene was filmed using CGI, but the location was at in
Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...
, a bit of a distance from the Hastings Line. In an interview about the film, editor Joe Walker claimed that part of the fun of cutting Last Passenger was seamlessly merging these disparate elements. "That’s the magic of movie making and good continuity," he says "you can try and blend these things together."


Editing

Unusually for a feature film, Last Passenger was cut on two edit systems, Final Cut Pro and Avid. Joe Walker wasn't available when principal photography was completed, and so Nooshin began editing a rough 'assembly edit' of the film on Final Cut Pro. When Walker became available and took over the editorial reins, this assembly edit had to be transferred to Avid using the laborious process of eye-matching.


Visual Effects

Another unusual element of post-production was that all of the film's
visual effects Visual effects (sometimes abbreviated VFX) is the process by which imagery is created or manipulated outside the context of a live-action shot in filmmaking and video production. The integration of live-action footage and other live-action foota ...
shots were delivered by a single VFX artist. During development, Nooshin and producer Zack Winfield traveled to
Wellington Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by me ...
to meet with Weta Workshop special effects head Richard Taylor, an avid train fanatic and supporter of the script. But with the film's budget constraints, shooting in New Zealand was deemed unfeasible. Nooshin and his producers ultimately put their faith in Tim Smit, a Dutch VFX artist who had worked on the original £500 trailer, to deliver all the digital effects shots.


Music

Liam Bates composed the film's original music after having impressed Nooshin with a temp score to the original pitch trailer, and his early involvement made possible an unconventional scoring process. Rather than wait for editing to be completed, Nooshin asked Bates to compose ideas and demos for scenes based on the script itself. These pieces then gradually evolved over the entirety of post-production, sometimes shifting in tone and location, so that when time came to record the final score with an orchestra its passages had organically found their form and placing. Bates states on the CD cover notes "Interestingly, the music for a movie which is literally constantly on the move, required particular attention othe vehicle of rhythm. This element which was laid out with strongly defined pace and carefully marked tempo transitions, would become the back-bone for the steadily rising tension in the film, leaving pitch or melody to draw out the emotion surrounding the characters and their interplay."


Sound Design

Sound Design was completed by Glenn Freemantle's Pinewood based Sound 24 company. In an interview about the film, Sound Effects Editor Eilam Hoffman explained how the team went about creating a language for the train so that it would become as much a character in the film as any of the passengers. A major creative choice was to use animal sounds such as lions, tigers, and cobras, morphed with the train sounds to give the locomotive an animalistic quality. He goes on to say "It’s a lot of fun to create big explosions and loud things. It’s really nice to build dynamic sounds, starting off very quiet and then hitting you with an impact."


Marketing

A found footage style teaser for the film was released in September 2013. Amateur video shows a group of teen revellers in a car driving over an open level crossing and colliding with a speeding train. The action mirrors a key moment in the film told from the point of view of the train passengers. Contactmusic.com wrote "The teaser is everything a good thriller trailer should be: intriguing, exciting...and darn scary."


Reception

''Last Passenger'' opened to a generally positive reception and currently scores 84% on
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
based on 19 reviews. On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 based on reviews from critics, the film has a score of 66 based on 11 reviews, considered to be "generally favorable reviews". Gary Goldstein wrote in the ''LA Times'' that taken on its own lower budget terms ''Last Passenger'' is an "engrossing, pulse-quickening journey that deserves a wider local release than it's receiving." and added that it is "Impressively directed by Omid Nooshin". ''
Total Film ''Total Film'' is a British film magazine published 13 times a year (published monthly and a summer issue is added every year since issue 91, 2004, which is published between July and August issue) by Future Publishing. The magazine was launched i ...
'' gave the film 3/5 stars, describing it as having "consistently tense, explosive action" ''The Hollywood Reporter'' wrote that "Last Passenger is a superbly executed B-movie that puts most bigger-budgeted Hollywood efforts to shame." Indiewire also wrote positively about the film saying "'Last Passenger' is a good antithesis to the overloaded and cluttered action Hollywood seems to love nowadays. If you're not feeling especially picky on plot or character, you won't go wrong with this compelling and stylish train thriller." Writing in ''
Sight & Sound ''Sight and Sound'' (also spelled ''Sight & Sound'') is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). It conducts the well-known, once-a-decade ''Sight and Sound'' Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time, ongoing ...
'',
Kim Newman Kim James Newman (born 31 July 1959) is an English journalist, film critic and fiction writer. Recurring interests visible in his work include film history and horror fiction—both of which he attributes to seeing Tod Browning's ''Dracula (1931 ...
described the film as having a "pleasantly old fashioned, Brit-film feel". Mike McCahill reviewed for ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'', giving 3/5 stars and writing "Nooshin holds on to a strain of logic that doesn't often survive at this level of filmmaking." HeyUGuys.com also gave the film 3/5 writing that the film avoids "typical cinematic conventionalities" and "begs the question; what would you do?" Reviewers were divided however over other aspects. Charlotte O'Sullivan wrote in the ''Evening Standard'' that the film "doesn’t have the bottle to swerve genre clichés", although ''Short List ''magazine held the opposite view: "Using just a few train carriages and a handful of actors, an impressive level of suspense and claustrophobia is created, which is happily cliché-free." ''Time Out'' was critical of the film's ending, writing "the 'who the hell’s driving this train?’ mystery element doesn’t go anywhere." Total Film however praised this element, writing that the film showed an "admirable reluctance to humanise the terrorist" adding "he’s nothing more than a shadowy, random nutter, and all the scarier for it". Similarly Brian Orndorf wrote "Instead of submitting entirely to formula, the movie attempts something seldom seen on the screen, trying to make the idea of a monster more frightening than the constant demands of one."


Awards


References


External links

* * * {{Rotten-tomatoes, last_passenger, Last Passenger British thriller films 2013 films Films set on trains 2010s English-language films 2010s British films