‘Speed Train’ Reminds Us That B Movies Still Exist

Back in the late twentieth century, when newfangled technologies like Betamax videotapes seemed to herald infinite possibilities of expansion for the film market, producers like Roger Corman made a point of producing as many cheesy knock-offs of popular films as possible. These weren’t good movies, but there was no surer sign of the cultural relevance of titles like Mad Max, Robocop, and Evil Dead than the sheer desperation of filmmakers to rip these movies off. Speed Train from director/writer/producer Ryan Francis of such films as The Jurassic Games: Extinction is here to remind us that these bad movies never really went away. Thank goodness, since this whole subgenre somehow feels more real than the rash of sequels that are just knock-offs that didn’t file off the brand name.

Speed Train   ★★★ (3/5 stars)
Directed by: Ryan Francis
Written by: Ryan Francis, Judah Ray
Starring: Nicky Whelan, Scout Taylor-Compton, Oliver Masucci, Louis Mandylor
Running time: 86 minutes

As the title implies, Speed Train is about a train that ends up going really, really fast, and needs to be slowed down. Since this adventure is quite literally on rails, though, extra drama is added in the form of disgraced tech genius Loklin, played by Louis Mandylor of My Big Fat Greek Wedding and a few dozen movies you’ve never heard of over the last couple of decades. He comes up with the plan to use the brain chip technology he invented, that’s inexplicably become increasingly omnipresent in this not-too-distant-dystopia, to commandeer buff prisoners. Then, he sells the use of their bodies to nutty rich people on the dark web so they can vicariously live out their dark violent fantasies using innocent, trapped, train passengers.

The sheer dumbness of this plan is beside the point. Loklin believes it’s a good idea, so that’s what the movie is about. Unluckily for him, quite a few people on the train are actually pretty good at hand-to-hand combat, most notably a cheerleading team and the mono-named Gray (Oliver Masucci), who takes on the Die Hard McClane role here as reasonably competent cop who’s way too old for this nonsense. The poor hapless prisoners, mostly taken over one at a time, aren’t as credible or as dangerous as you might think. Mostly because merely being a nutty rich person who’s hijacked a jacked prisoner’s body with virtual reality gear doesn’t guarantee any especially impressive combat skills.

The ending of Speed Train is a foregone conclusion. The journey is the main appeal here, with cheesy, gory violence and crude fight choreography selling a bunch of one-dimensional archetypes doing their best to survive the train ride. The world-building is about as shallow as the rails, which just makes how on-point it feels that much sadder. The brain chips everyone uses aren’t really any faster than just scanning their phones. The vending machines still jam. And of course, the evil corporation that drove Loklin to a life of overly complicated crime decides to try to solve the problem themselves by just killing everyone on the train.

Though Speed Train feels like Snowpiercer meets Speed meets Die Hard, its structure to  is remarkably similar to Ziam. The forgettable Muay Thai zombie film from Netflix earlier this year also had to abruptly parachute in actual trained soldiers for the climax since the zombies weren’t really a credible threat. The difference between the two is, that Speed Train knows exactly how stupid it is. No Netflix executive had to sign off on an appropriately pretentious level of social commentary to get Speed Train funded. Ryan Francis wanted to get all these actors fist-fighting each other on a train and worked backwards from there to construct a plot where they’d have a plausible reason to do so.

Speed Train play its farce with a surprisingly straight face. There are no knowing winks to the camera about how the teenage cheerleaders don’t look like teenagers, and barely even look like cheerleaders. There are plenty of jokes — but always contextual, never breaking the fourth wall. What world-building there is, convinces only because it’s so muted, so terribly limited. Whatever stupid sequence of events was necessary to convince a big chunk of the population that they needed brain chips, our characters made peace with it a long time ago and try not to dwell on it. It feels like it could have been made by AI for a fraction of the cost.

Most pertinently for an action flick, the pacing is genuinely great. There’s just the right amount of set-up to make the thin premise believable and establish which characters we most want to see punching and which ones we want to see punched. And once the bloody action scenes start, there’s only just enough time for everyone to catch their breath before the next one. Speed Train is the kind of movie you might put on the TV while doomscrolling but which quickly and surprisingly outperforms your phone when it comes to mindless nonsense that’s good at keeping your attention.