Money Train

(Joseph Ruben, USA, 1995)

It is silly to slam every new action-adventure movie for being outlandish, stereotypical and clichéd – since most of these films are live-action cartoons to begin with. But, even to someone like me who is sympathetic to despised genres, Money Train is pretty woeful.

Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson team once more (as they did in White Men Can’t Jump, 1992) as John and Charlie, a knockabout pair of buddy cops – as well as foster brothers! – going up against both a psychotic subway arsonist named Torch (Chris Cooper) and a fascistic public official, Patterson (Robert Blake).

The unimaginative banter of these law-enforcing boys (the script is credited to David Loughery [1953-2024] and Doug Richardson) quickly becomes tiresome. And it takes forever to reach the climactic scene of a berserk, runaway train (always a gratifying sight in movies!). Brian De Palma’s regular editor Bill Pankow clearly got a few good cuts into this sequence, but this is no De Palma Special.

Joseph Ruben has certainly seen better days as a director, when in possession of far more promising material with which to work.

Money Train strains to be benignly multicultural, with its sloppy gestures of respect toward its token black and Latino characters. The focus of the latter urge fixes on Jennifer Lopez as Grace Santiago, poised between the two leading guys. It’s a thankless part.

Simultaneously, as if in unconscious (or only semi-conscious) rebellion against its own politically correct side, the film manages to be casually but monstrously offensive on every other score.

John and Charlie dream of being “like boat people – only richer”; and fear that, if they are jailed, they will be transformed into the “butt brothers”. Scratch refugees and queers from the target audience!

With allies like this, does the cause of multiculturalism really need any enemies?

MORE Ruben: The Forgotten, The Good Son, The Stepfather

© Adrian Martin December 1995