Popular reviews

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  Review by Sean Baker 5

  Didn't even know this film existed. Watched it on the Shout Factory double-feature Blu-ray with The Domino Principal.

  Fun stuff. All star cast. Pretty outrageous yet spectacular ending. Think Runaway Train meets Outbreak.

  Directed by George P. Cosmatos - Cobra, Rambo

  Oh... amazing aerial footage, especially the opening shot, which was shot by Ron Goodman, President of SpaceCam Systems, the steadicam of the sky. A different look from today's drones.

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  Review by Keith Grubb ★★★ 2

  A Swedish terrorist (Lou Castel), having been infected by a form of pneumonic plague hops on a train with a thousand passengers. US Army Colonel Burt Lancaster becomes the asshole in charge and he's already thinking how to dispose of the situation. On board "brilliant" neurologist Richard Harris and a shitload of big names try to survive not just the outbreak but the armed medical team on board. Since most of the good cast are all in first class, they'll probably be okay, but a big fuck you to those plebs in second class.
  I had always avoided this Lew Grade/Carlo Ponti production in the firm belief it was shit. It was and it wasn't. There are some quite tense…

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  Review by Kaijuman ★★★★

  2019 Cult Movie Challenge 

  Week 13: Mar. 26-Apr. 1
  70's Disaster Movie Week

  “Do you think I would personally send a thousand people to their deaths?”
  “No. But I think you'd simply let them be killed. And that's almost worse.”

  A severely underrated disaster film, The Cassandra Crossing is a super 70’s thrill ride.

  You’ve got a train full of people possibly infected with a pneumonic plague, armed men in white hazmat suits (real Italian-like) keeping everyone under quarantine, about a half dozen main characters with their own life troubles, about twenty minor characters to lengthen the runtime, and the destination they’re all being sent to: a dangerous and unstable bridge named The Cassandra Crossing. 

  Something about these films are…

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  Review by Krautsalat ★★★★

  Woovember 2020: Warm-up film #7
  Deliria Italiano 2020: Film #4

  Stop breathing! That is how the disease is transmitted.

  A deadly virus and O.J. Simpson on the same train! Whoever wins, we lose.

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  Review by Ian Curran ★★

  “Perhaps we can stop the virus spreading to second class.”

  This plague on a train movie wasn’t good, no even accidentally.

  There’s a couple great shots and set pieces, plus the ending is bonkers. Add in Richard Harris’s baseline charisma and it’s difficult to rate it one star, even though it deserves it.

  I just can’t comprehend the characters in this film:

  —OJ Simpson plays a sketchy priest with submachine gun skills.
  —Richard Harris plays a doctor who can fix the brain cells of disabled children (WTF?!)
  —Sophie Loren plays Richard Harris’s wife who married and divorced him…twice!
  —The great Lee Strasberg plays a character whose only function is his ability to speak Swedish.
  —Martin Sheen plays a long haired prick.

  Bonkers, and not in an enjoyable way cause the movie was over two hours long!

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  Review by Mark Cunliffe 🇵🇸 ★★ 2

  It's the August Bank Holiday weekend so it seems kind of fitting to watch The Cassandra Crossing, the kind of crap ITV would put on as the big Bank Holiday movie back in the '80s.

  Lew Grade had a successful '60s on television with shows like The Saint, Danger Man, Department S and The Prisoner, but his Midas touch often deserted him when he financed star-laden movies in the '70s (see also Raise the Titanic and Michael Winner's The Big Sleep).

  The Cassandra Crossing certainly has a starry cast - Richard Harris, Sophia Loren, Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Martin Sheen, OJ Simpson, Alida Valli, Lionel Stander and even Lee Strasberg - as befits a disaster movie, but it's also something…

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  Review by pirateneckbeard ★★★ 2

  So this is film definitely gets derailed from its material a many o time and lacks its true coarse trying to have a big pathos. That be said there is some redeemable qualities to this film that make it watchable if you can stand certain elements. Honestly the beginning (and ending) shots are really cinematic beauty and there are a few good story arcs in this overtly long film to achieve its merits and one could say it is not worth it's walk for it's drags of water but I actually liked certain gulps of humanity in this film. This be said go into this as a disaster film that has some components what are smart but there are a lot that lay flat on the tracks. I liked how the movie ended but question the journey somewhat.

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  Review by 🇵🇱 Steve G 🇵🇸 ★★★ 2

  An all-star cast adorns this cross between train thriller and disaster movie that, like most disaster films, is far too hysterical and far too long for its own good.

  It's never short of incident though, and the side stories are kept to a minimum for a change, which was a blessed relief. It's difficult to talk about the chaotic and surprising ending without giving away a lot of the film, but it's an unholy mess that could warrant a review all by itself.

  Overall decent fun, even to someone who often doesn't care for disaster films. If only we still had Richard Harris around, he could have sorted out this Covid hell for us.

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  Review by Mondo Cinema ★★½

  I hear Charles Band is going to take footage from this and make Corona Train.

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  Review by FakeVoorhees ★★

  The simplest way to describe The Cassandra Crossing is "Outbreak on a train". Except this movie lacks the pacing and tension of Outbreak. There's a big ensemble cast so a lot of time is spent introducing characters in the first half which is overstuffed with unnecessary characters and storylines, causing the pace to drag after an exciting opening setup. Mixed in this section we get periodic scenes of the infected man wandering around touching everything and everyone on the train to the point that it becomes comical. Once the outbreak starts and the military takes over the train, the movie becomes a bit more focused but you're likely to have lost interest by that point.

  
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  Actionx52 | 2022
  Film 5/52
  Criteria #24: Watch an disaster action film

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  Review by Rock

  This review contains mild spoilers.

  The primary reason to watch this is all the helicopter shots. That is, all the shots taken from a helicopter, of which there are many, and all the shots taken of helicopters, of which there are probably fewer but enough to satisfy. The former do a great job of presenting us picturesque vistas to admire and of reminding us that there is in fact a real train here, and this isn’t just a case of actors holed up in sets pretending to be a train. Quite frankly, these make it easier to ignore the dicier visual effects during the scene where a sweaty and scared Martin Sheen sticks his head out the top of the…

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  Review by Jacob Knight ★★½

  Turgid, preposterous Irwin Allen style star studded disaster flick from George P. Cosmatos where a WHO burglar is infected with a deadly, COVID-esque disease and then trapped on a train carrying various famous folks, including OJ Simpson as an undercover priest (it’ll make sense if you actually watch it) and Martin Sheen in Robert Evans cosplay. Somewhat worth it as a Saturday afternoon hangout film, mostly just to watch Sophia Loren and Richard Harris bicker as our resident estranged lovers in a first class dining car, or Lee Strasberg trying to figure out why he’s in this movie at all. Anyway, Cosmatos gets to shoot some machine guns and blow a bunch of shit up by the end, more or less predicting the rest of his weird ass career, but the rest is a mostly boring (yet still beautifully photographed) slog masquerading as high adventure at the movies.