Night Train

This quirky romantic drama with thriller trimmings sees gentle ageing ex-con Hurt, an English northerner with a lonely passion for toy trains, holing up in a middle class Dublin lodging house to escape the hired killers of his old boss (Cranitch). There, he falls for Graham Greene-reading spinster (Blethyn) to the consternation of her embittered mother (Flanagan). Performances are good, with Hurt, especially, dignifying the rather pedestrian script, and the romance is handled delicately and humorously, but the gangsters' cardboard characterisations and periodic brutalities we could do without. Though it's often well observed and nicely shot by Seamus Deasy, it's spoilt by clumsily edited thriller sequences, predictable plotting and a lacklustre climax set on the Venice-bound Orient Express.