Derailed

By R.S.

For reasons never fully explained we are asked to believe that the U.S. Government is storing deadly bacteria, useful in germ warfare, at the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva. For reasons never fully explained, a team of agents--their allegiance never identified--breaks in to rip the stuff off. Two are stopped, but one gets away and, infected with the plague, boards an international express train bound for Sweden. For reasons n.f.e., Burt Lancaster, the American intelligence agent in charge of arresting both crook and disease, orders the cars sealed (to prevent an epidemic), then diverts the express to Poland over a rickety bridge scarcely able to sustain the weight of a handcar. Lancaster persists in this curious decision despite information that spontaneous remission is occurring in all those infected.

The thought keeps nagging that this command decision is based on aesthetic rather than scientific, moral or political considerations. It may be that the agent charitably wishes to spare the world more banal dialogue. Or it may be that he wishes to spare his colleagues on the train any further embarrassment. Surely he, like the viewer, must wonder why Richard Harris, as the only doctor aboard, has been encouraged to dye his hair white-blond. And why Sophia Loren, as Harris' estranged wife, is working in a gray make up that makes her look plagued even before the dis ease breaks out. Or why poor Martin Sheen, cast as Ava Gardner's creepy gigolo, undergoes such unmotivated regeneration in crisis. And why OJ. Simpson is required to run around in a priest's collar and talk in an imbecilic simper. Doubtless the hero sympathizes with Lee Strasberg, who appears to be so affronted by his dialogue that he whispers all of it in virtually inaudible silence, and wishes to bestow on the other players the gift of still deeper silence.

So much for good intentions. Most of them escape from the wreck of the model train on the special-effects man's miniature trestle. Such audiences as there may be for this pulse-slowing movie might wish to reflect on the dismal results of commercial overreaching. For what The Cassandra Crossing offers is an unstable blend of three currently popular genres: the paranoid thriller, in which the good guys turn out to be rotten; the train-of-fools story; and, finally, a disaster film. Decent writing and skilled direction might have come up with something admirable for its nerve if nothing else. But the crowd responsible for this one lacks even the wit to take pleasure in its own low cunning. There is no more painful journey than this currently available at the movies. R.S.

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