Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Better than most recent disaster epics!, 10 Jul 2000
Ahh, this movie is just great. Just over two hours of non-stop action, an all-star cast, nice European scenery and brilliantly photographed train footage. In this sometimes cheesy buy wholly entertaining movie, terrorists attempt to blow up the International Health Organisation in Geneva. The attempt fails, oen is shot and two are accidentally infected with a germ warfare virus. One of them later dies in hospital, the other escapes and boards a train bound for Stockholm. When the authorities learn of the threat to Europe as the train gathers speed, it is up to Colonel Mackenzie(well acted by Burt Lancaster) to prevent a disastrous epidemic. As no country will let passengers off, he reroutes the train to Poland and the Cassandra Crossing bridge, unused since 1948. On board the train, a beautiful writer(Sophia Loren) and a brilliant brain surgeon(Richard Harris) must fight the plague - and stop the train before it means certain death for everyone. And the pace never slackens, after an explosive opening until the nail-biting and spectacular climax, this movie bombs along with a real sense of urgency, with pulsating action and a great musical score by Jerry Goldsmith. Don't miss it!
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Second class entertainment at its finest!, 10 Sep 2006
Sometimes you want nothing more than to turn your brain off and settle down to a slice of Europudding. Lew Grade and Carlo Ponti's Anglo-Italian co-production The Cassandra Crossing is a perfect example. Full of fattening but empty calories and boasting an Irish, Italian, American, German and anybody else who wasn't busy that month cast of fading stars, a Greek director and shot in Switzerland and France with the profits from The Muppet Show, it's a prime example of that much maligned genre, the conspiracy/disease/disaster/train/action/thriller. Richard Harris and the co-producer's missus Sophia Loren take the leads as the glamorous twice-divorced couple - he conveniently a doctor, she a pulp novelist - who find themselves on the same train as Martin Sheen's drug smuggling toyboy gigolo mountain climber (seen in one surreal moment standing on his head on a bed wearing only Y-fronts while Ava Gardner applauds), O.J. Simpson's gun-toting not-really-a-priest (and yes, he does go down), Lee Strasberg's concentration camp survivor muttering "I can't go back to Poland" (some of my relatives feel the same, Lee), Lionel Stander's loveable conductor (yes, he's called Max and he looks after them), the then-Mrs Harris, Ann Turkel as a free-spirited hippie chick who can't sing (or do much about her boyfriend's premature ejaculation problem either for that matter), and, critically, Lou Castel's sweaty Swedish terrorist (described in one memorable exchange as a "sweaty pervert"). The reason he's sweating is he's got a nasty strain of Pneumonic Plague that the Americans were planning on destroying (honest) in Geneva before he and his ill-fated pal tried to blow up the lab.
While Ingrid Thulin's humanitarian doctor tries to find a way of saving the passengers and Burt Lancaster's American general tries to find a more permanent containment solution involving a rickety bridge en route to a disused WW2 Polish `isolation' camp ("It's a Warsaw Pact country but we can't do anything about that") in one of those flashing light control rooms with minimalist glass maps (you can just imagine them exchanging anecdotes about the days when they were working with Visconti inbetween takes), it's up to Richard Harris to save the day. Boy, are those passengers in trouble - he's such a responsible doctor that when he sees a sweaty Castel panting and heaving over a bowl of rice pudding he doesn't even tell the nun sitting opposite him in the dining car that she might want to try the trifle instead, so we know that a lot of the passengers aren't going to make it. Oh, did I mention the `cute' little girl? Alida Valli's governess? John Phillip Law's `sinister' military aide?
There's an enjoyably overwrought Jerry Goldsmith score (the only one to include an entire cue used in a previous score, in this case a reorchestrated cur from Islands in the Stream), some better than expected production values and worse than expected back-projection and one real howler of a continuity goof as the locomotive changes type two-thirds through the film. But most of all, it's just demented enough in its straight-faced way to be great fun if you're in the right mood. Director George Pan Cosmatos may have been a hack, but he was a very proficient one, as an extremely well executed and impressively edited opening raid on the World Health Organisation - sorry, International Health Organization's headquarters demonstrates. It also has some genuinely impressive camerawork (including a couple of shots I still can't work out how they got) and what is easily the best transfer of a sick Basset hound from a moving train to a helicopter before the train hits a tunnel action setpiece in screen history. Now THAT'S entertainment!
Carlton's DVD has no extras but does offer a more or less acceptable widescreen transfer.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Classy..., 7 May 2001
By A Customer
One of the best disaster films of the 70's. This one belongs with all the others in the collection, Airport, The Poseidon Adventure etc. Sophia Loren is exquisite, Ava Gardner is breathtaking & so is the whole cast. The effects are well made, the plot although familiar still works with most audiences. It's done with class and a lot of style. Picturesque! Don't Miss It!
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