The Last Train from Madrid

The Spanish Civil War is pressganged as a backdrop for this atrocious farrago of love, duty and tearful self-sacrifice in which assorted characters jockey for the limited number of permits which will enable them (or loved ones) to take the last train out of war-torn Madrid. Roland and Quinn are army officers, now on opposite sides, who once swore an oath of comradeship; Lamour is the woman they both love; Ayres is an American journalist who falls for the daughter of a political activist executed as he arrived to interview him; Cummings is a callow soldier in love with a fallen woman, his innocence letting her hope for redemption. And so it goes, in a torrent of tawdry clichés, made no more palatable by inserted newsreel shots of the bombardment of Madrid. Roland, Quinn and Atwill give as sterling performances as their dialogue will permit; Lamour and Cummings challenge, respectively, for most zomboid and most embarrassing performance of the year.