By Susan Granger
Special to WestportNow
If you were expecting “The Girl on the Train” to be an enticing psychosexual thriller, like “Gone Girl,” forget it!
This grim screen adaptation of Paula Hawkins’s best-selling novel dissatisfies in every way, except one: Emily Blunt delivers a powerhouse performance as the pathetic protagonist, Rachel Watson.
Lonely Rachel Watson is a deeply depressed alcoholic who rides Metro North train back and forth from suburban Ardsley-on-Hudson to Manhattan’s Grand Central Station, pretending she still has a job.
A bleary-eyed divorcee sipping cheap vodka from a designer water bottle, Rachel projects her vicarious fantasies onto suburbanites living in the stylish houses that run along the tracks near her old home.
She’s fascinated by one golden couple in particular: beautiful, blonde Megan Hipwell (Haley Bennett) and her handsome husband, Scott (Luke Evans). “She’s what I lost,” Rachel convinces herself.
Not really. Deeply discontented as a Stepford housewife, Megan is flagrantly promiscuous, even trying to seduce her psychiatrist, Dr. Kamal Abdic (Edgar Ramirez).
Adding to the intrigue, Rachel’s ex-husband Tom Watson (Justin Theroux) lives up the block; he’s now married to Anna (Rebecca Ferguson). They have a baby girl, and Megan was their nanny.
When Megan suddenly goes missing, Rachel becomes obsessed, reporting to a suspicious detective (Alison Janney) that – from the commuter train – she once spied Megan embracing another man on her upstairs balcony.
Problem is: Rachel suffers from boozy blackouts, so she’s not really sure what she remembers, except that – after one drunken night – she woke up bloodied and bruised. Matters get worse when Megan’s dead body is found.
Clumsily scripted by Erin Cressida Wilson (“Secretary”) and directed by Tate Taylor (“The Help”), it’s more like a tediously cheesy soap-opera than a murder mystery. And since the sneering, sleazy villain skulks around like a thug, it’s not difficult to guess who he is.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Girl on the Train” derails with a flimsy, fragmented 4, – quite frustrating.
The new Holocaust film “Denial” revolves around British historian David Irving (Timothy Spall), who – until the late 1980s – enjoyed respectability among his peers, even though his best-known book “Hitler’s War” (1977) claimed that Hitler had no knowledge of the Holocaust.
But then Irving began to deny the existence of the Holocaust, ridiculing claims that there were gas chambers.
When a strident American academic from Queens, N.Y., Deborah Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz), accused him of anti-Semitism in “Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory” (1993), it never occurred to her that she – and Penguin Books – could be sued for libel – or that the ensuing court cast would put acceptance of the Holocaust on trial.
Under British law, the burden of proof lies on the defendant. In America, it lies with the plaintiff. So Lipstadt, a history professor at Emory University in Atlantic, could either settle out of court, which Irving would claim as a personal victory, or proceed; she chooses the latter.
Solicitor Anthony Julius (Andrew Scott), who represented Princess Diana in her divorce against Prince Charles, prepares the case which dour Scottish barrister Richard Rampton (Tom Wilkinson) presents at London’s Royal Court of Justice on Lipstadt’s behalf.
Patching together actual transcripts and meticulously researched recordings, screenwriter David Hare (“Wetherby,” “The Hours”) and director Mick Jackson (“The Bodyguard,” TV’s “Temple Grandin”) proceed as the eight-week courtroom drama evolves.
As a result, sneering, smarmy David Irving was not only discredited but also disgraced.
Too bad the filmmakers didn’t try for more of an emotional connection with Deborah Lipstadt, comparable, perhaps, to “Woman in Gold” (2015), in which Helen Mirren played Jewish refugee who went back to Vienna to reclaim a Klimt painting stolen from her family by the Nazis.
In the current political climate, the release of this film couldn’t be timelier, examining concepts like fact-checking, conspiracy theories, and the need for concrete evidence when making claims.
On the Granger Gauge, “Denial” is a somber, suitably shaming 6, yet without a satisfying showdown moment.
( Editor’s Note: Westport resident Susan Granger grew up in Hollywood, studied journalism with Pierre Salinger at Mills College, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism. In addition to writing for newspapers and magazines, she has been on radio/television as an anchorwoman and movie/drama critic for many years. See her reviews at www.susangranger.com.)
