The Midnight Meat Train

Directed by Ryu Kitamura

Starring Bradley Cooper, Leslie Bibb, Vinnie Jones, Roger Bart and Brooke Shields and cameo by Ted Raimi and Quinton "Rampage" Jackson

Availability: on Russian dvd now, US dvd date unknown

I was really looking forward to this when I heard Kitamura was helming this project. Over the past few months ive seen average reviews so my expectations were tempered a little. Overall I really enjoyed it and It met pretty much met my expectations. Visually the movie is astonishing. The cinematography is awesome and there are some cool pov and cgi shots. Having said that the cgi blood and some of the special effects were kinda generic.

The movie is about this guy (Bradley Cooper) thats a struggling photographer in New York that gets a lucky break. He gets promised a gallery presentation if he can come up with some great pictures. He starts following people in hopes of capturing a natural awesome picture. One girl he follows to the subway later becomes missing. He discovers that this crazy man (Vinnie Jones) is probably murdering people on the subway at night. He starts to follow him during the day to his job at a meat packing plant trying to get proof of what he's doing. Little does he know that Vinnie is always one step ahead of him trying to thwart his plans. Its not a murder mystery cuz immediately it shows the butcher slaughtering the people on the subway. Some of the kills are cool like the above picture and theres also a cool beheading and a shot with the head rolling with a point of view from the victim eyes.

Bradley Cooper does an incredible job as normal guy that has to go buck wild by the end of the movie. Vinnie Jones of course plays a bad ass like what he does best. Leslie Bibb is fine as hell and easily making her way up my dream boner list. I wouldnt say its perfect though. Even though I was never bored it does seem like a short story movie that was extended out for a full length movie. I was also worried that it was a total supernatural movie and full of unknown rules but it ended at least partially grounded in reality. Also the movie ended pretty strong overall with the final showdown and aftermath.

While it was pretty enjoyable there still were some flaws. At times the movie does seem a little long and repetitive. The overuse of cgi blood was kinda annoying also. But overall I enjoyed the story and thought all the actors did a fantastic job. The fight choreography for the finale was damn good and I thought an unrestrained Ryu Kitamura showed what he can do with a decent Hollywood budget and production. Its a shame the studio treated it like a bastard step child and didnt give it a proper release. On a scale of 1-10 I give this a humongous meat hammer to the head 7.3 out of 10