This film didnt really have a chance, but then putting out your film in the middle of blockbuster season is a bit like whacking out your schlong in a room full of porn stars. Iron Man, Batman … Will Smith … pretty much with the exception of Wall-E and Sex and the City the biggest films of 2008 had big fat dicks. The nice thing about Transsiberian is that it doesnt really have a dick at all – I mean first of all size really doesnt count – but everything that makes this film good is to do with its leading lady – and I promise it is nothing like Sex and the City. We follow an apparently naive American couple on their few thousand mile train journey from Beijing to Moscow. We pretty soon learn that it is a favorite route for drug smugglers and you can guess the rest. Or can you? Well the film does a pretty good job of throwing you off the scent a few times, ratcheting up the tension until the final, I have to say slightly bonkers (logistically) ending. My only issue is that it does almost as good a job of ratcheting up its Russian stereotypes too, until you’ll be convinced that anyone who isnt a local will amost certainly be immediately killed by any or all Russians upon arrival – representative this is not. But, going back to dicks, or lack of, this film is really all about the power a woman has to make and live with her own decisions. Sometimes they are not the right ones and sometimes she regrets them, but ultimately it is a “I am doing this, join me or dont” situation, or to be more prescise, “I have done this, deal with it”. It is a bit of a spoiler to say (I.E. stop reading now if you are about to watch the film) that this all seems to fall apart at the end, but its safe to say that the main male role here is one occupied by a woman in 99.9% of similar films. A refreshing change, but one that in an ideal world wouldnt even have been noteworthy.