User Reviews

Gene Wilder is a passenger aboard the Silver Streak from Los Angeles to Chicago and meets an enchanting woman, Jill Clayburgh, and her art-expert supervisor and author, Stefan Gierasch. Gierasch is on his way to a convention of art historians where he is about to deliver a speech that will discredit and disenfranchise another passenger, Patrick McGoohan. So McGoohan and his goons simply shoot the professor in the head, throw his body off the train, and capture Jill Clayburgh with the intention of killing her later, after she's been forced to put some effort into the service of their cause.

Wilder takes passing notice of the professor's dead body as it drops past his window and seeks to solve the mystery. Richard Pryor is drawn into the story, or rather hauled in by his ears. McGoohan and Goons finally wind up with the McGuffin but it's too late. The Feds have twigged. The story ends with the bad guys dead and a locomotive smashing through Chicago's Union Station but happily missing the waiting room on whose benches I've spent so many happy hours asleep and waiting for my next connection. (I recommend the wonderful Greek restaurants a few blocks to the north. Avoid the taramasalata. If you find this recommendation useful, note that I accept donations. )

None of this story is to be taken seriously for a moment. It could have been lifted straight out of an inexpensive 1938 black-and-white comic mystery with Bob Hope, Chester Morris, and Mantan Moreland somewhere in the cast. Only this is in gorgeous color, more expensive, and the humor is updated. (Richard Pryor could be outrageous in his own, relatively quiet, self-deprecating way, and he was a fine mimic.) Jill Clayburgh is very appealing -- compellingly beautiful but in a goofy way that undercuts the conventions that sustain the illusion of perfection. She has a slight, endearing lisp, and her cheeks are tucked up just beneath her lower lids.

Gene Wilder has a big head of fuzzy hair and his eyeballs seem ready to pop out on coiled springs, like a Halloween mask. He's always either indignant or awed at the goings-on around him. I enjoyed him most when he swore because the curses stand in such contrast to his meekness. Thrown off the train (for the first time, but not the last), he climbs to his feet, gestures wildly, and shouts, "SON OF A *****!" He's very easy to identify with.

Patrick McGoohan is not. Nobody could ever identify with Patrick McGoohan because nobody has ever been so unflappable -- him and his serene blue eyes and his cracked, incisive baritone. One of his Goons is Richard Kiel, the ambulatory pituitary gland, nine feet tall and sporting a mouth full of golden Chiclets.

It's kind of silly but it's absorbing too because any viewer would want to see how the silliness turns out to be satisfying. Enjoyable and diverting. Kids who are old enough to appreciate, say, Bill Murray, but who have outgrown Jerry Lewis should get a kick out of it.

As an avowed train nut when I was a kid, this movie was like dying and going to heaven. What could be better than a movie set on a silver express train? Well, quite a few movies as I'd later discover, with a cheese-filled romantic subplot and the marketing of Gene Wilder as the new ladies man of 1976 weighing down what is otherwise a generally entertaining screwball comedy. Richard Pryor in the prime of his career was so good he really only needed to walk on screen and people would laugh in expectation of what he'd do next, and he delivers here. The stunt swing off the top of the train on the signal arm and the biplane ride are memorable moments, and the ending is still one of my best-remembered scenes in the movies. And the cinematography, with the beauty of the Canadian Rockies on full display, is a treat.