Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Abegail Noëlle While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

jabrbi OR, Murphy's Law meets Too Many Cooks OK, here's how the story writing conference went for this film: Right! We're here to discuss ideas for a train disaster film. Any ideas? Freight train instead of passenger train with dangerous chemicals. Like it. Anything else? A nuclear weapon instead of chemicals. Hmm. How about nuclear weapon AND chemicals? Much better. Shoddy maintenance takes out the brakes and train careers toward city. Good. Any cities with 20 miles of track heading downhill into the centre? Tracey, check into that will you. Anything else? Chasing train that tries to stop the train but fails. Yes! Chasing train causes train to keep going when it could have stopped. Yes! Yes! And so on, and on, and on.After about a month the conference finishes and EVERYTHING is in the film, except the kitchen sink. Anything anyone could think about got included in this film. Doctors, police, firemen, military, heroes, disasters, fires, explosions, big trains with massive inertia, annoying kids (are kids always annoying?), useless women, helicopters, guns, lots of aimless running around.Too many cooks involved in this film.Then they had the script writing conference where they had to stitch all ideas together into a plot: Smuggle the nuclear weapon on board the train to save money. I'm sure that happens every day. Shoddy maintenance that nobody notices takes out the train's brakes. Daily occurrence in my neck of the woods. Drop the hero onto the train using a helicopter. Everybody does that in film these days, just look at James Bond. (That one has to go OK.) People fall over at the worst times and damage their legs. Happens to me every time I take the subway. Have the coupling on the chasing train fail, just because. Those things never work. Have something go right, like stopping the train, and then screw it up, like the chasing train suddenly hitting it with an almighty thwack that doesn't derail anything. Train derailments never happen in real life, no matter what hits the train. Derail the train. Nope, can't do that in case the nuclear weapon explodes. Hah! Fooled you. Just when you thought something was going to go right.And so it went. If anything could go wrong in this film it did: water meets sodium (boom), dangerous chemicals go on fire for no good reason, car accidents, bike accidents, helicopter accidents, mobile phones suddenly don't work, cars run out of petrol, nobody remembers to take a gun but everyone has a torch, accident blocks only road out of town.There's at least 3 films in this one presentation: train disaster movie, dangerous chemical spill disaster movie, massive explosion disaster movie. Thankfully, the film moves from one film to the next linearly so we're not troubled with having to keep track of who's in which movie. But if does get very exhausting after a while, just from the sheer onslaught of one disaster after another.However, there are a few redeeming moments. There's an explosion sequence that I thought was very well done for such a low budget film. And there's a couple of times where the whiny kids almost get it. (Sadly they survived, but I did get my hopes up for a second.) And there's a couple of black men who get to be heroes, instead of the usual chisel-jawed white men. (Go back to disaster movies of the 1970's and 1980's and try to spot a non-white hero.) Overall, there's just too much thrown into this film. If only they'd taken one idea and made a 90 minute movie, then I'd have had a much better experience watching it. And then they could have made the other two films at a later date.As it is, stock up on the drinks and chips and hunker down for a LONG disaster unfolding before your quickly tiring eyes.

jones265 Nearly every trite event possible has been thrown into this dragging nightmare. The evil money hungry young man sneaks an apparently armed Russian bomb onto a train. How did he get it on there? The Russian's are trying to "dispose" of this? Why didn't they disarm it? Isn't it easier to dispose of nuclear waste in Russia? And the spineless accountant has to go along with the scheme. Why do they always tell the accountant? But he calls in a warning (from the office phone to the train control center, not the police by the way). What do you look under to find the number for the train control center? Was it the chemicals that ate through the chemical resistant air hoses in a few short hours or was it the fire inside the boxcar that shouldn't have been able to reach under the car to the brake lines? And don't the brakes go ON like tractor trailers when the brake pressure is lost? Couldn't they have put the train electric motors in REVERSE? What about all those big wheels on each train car that run the MANUAL EMERGENCY BRAKES? And the train coupler failed? What are the odds? The government bomb experts have no idea what the bomb configuration is, but one brave man tells us he can disarm it in his sleep. And it just goes on and on and on and I could go on and on and on, but all bad things must end. And the very minute the crisis is over apparently somebody is rebuilding a house on the tarmac outside the hanger. How can so many good actors put together such a horrible movie? I hope you get to watch this too because misery loves company.

swekos I rarely, if ever, give a movie the dreaded 1. I usually try and look for the good parts of a movie, whether it's the acting, or the story, or some subplot, or even the special effects. But with this total waste of time, there was no doubt at all. It is sad when a movie is so bad, so lame, that is essentially a parody of itself. What is even sadder is that this definitely was not a cheap movie made by college kids with nothing better to do. No, this is a network flick, and lots of thousands of dollars went into creating this piece of nonsense The acting is the high spot of the movie, yet in places it is barely watchable. The production values are so-so, the effects are there, but aren't exactly that special. But what really makes this movie so bad, it's the plot. It's not a really bad idea, it's just how the idea was developed, or tried to, i better say. The plot holes are so big, you could drive a train through them. I could not figure the meaning and purpose of about half of the scenes, and the entire riot subplot is mildly put, ridiculous.

stanleymchale Here in the UK we have a channel called Five which is well known for showing rubbish films, especially during the day.So when I saw a film called Atomic Train scheduled on that very channel this afternoon, I could have been excused for fearing the worst.But Atomic Train is an outstanding production. I've always liked Rob Lowe's work, and in this instance he's again terrific.I've also been a fan of trains for many years and so a film that contained Mr Lowe and a freight train was already off on the right foot with me.But I couldn't have prepared myself for such a gripping ride. The set pieces are magnificent and certainly eek the best out of what must have been a substantial budget. The scenery and photography are also wonderful.In terms of structure, the film builds brilliantly, with an air of suspense filling the room as the train hurtles towards Denver. I can't recommend Atomic Train highly enough to fans of both trains and atomic weapons, but also to anyone wanting a hearty afternoon of pure escapism.I can't understand why people have scored the film poorly for being unrealistic. And yet, they wont say Terminator 2 is unrealistic. Which it is. More so. The chances of creating androids that can ride a motorbike are very slim, even in the future. And time travel? No. That's even more unrealistic. So before deciding to write Atomic Train off, why not consider this;At least trains exist. As do, unfortunately, atomic weapons. Therefore the film is quite realistic.