Night Train to Munich

I watched the first of the DVD/BDs I bought from the Barnes & Noble Criterion 1/2-off sale. I don't really want to do a full-up review of a film that I'm sure many more qualified people have written about over the last 70 years, but there were a couple of things that jumped out at me. The first was the use of models and painted backdrops to expand the scope of the film. The model shots are fairly obvious to a modern viewer, but I was actually really impressed with the detail put into the models, and they are shot from rather close-up (though nothing like the Lord of the Rings bigatures, certainly).

Two minor characters in the film had appeared two years earlier in Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (same screenwriter, different director, similar to Michael Keaton's character in both Jackie Brown and Out of Sight). Their popularity warranted leading roles the next year in Crook's Tour, which is included with The Lady Vanishes 2-disc.

Night Train to Munich is a fast-paced, well directed, WWII, action, adventure, chase comedy made before the world knew what was happening inside German concentration camps, and as a result downplays the atrocities of that reality. Although in many ways typical of late 30's/early 40's movies of the same genre, there are plenty of twists and turns along that way to help the film warrant a spot among the classics.