Synopsis
An L.A. District Attorney attempts to take an unwilling murder witness back to the United States to testify against a top-level mob boss. Frantically attempting to escape two deadly hitmen sent to silence her, they board a Vancouver-bound train only to discover that the killers are onboard with them. For the next 20 hours, as the train hurls through the beautiful but isolated Canadian wilderness, a deadly game of cat and mouse ensues in which their ability to tell friend from foe is a matter of life and death.
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Cast
- Gene HackmanRobert Caulfield
- Anne ArcherCarol Hunnicut
- James B. SikkingNelson
- Harris YulinLeo Watts
- J.T. WalshMichael Tarlow
- M. Emmet WalshSergeant Dominick Benti
- Susan HoganKathryn Weller
- Nigel BennettJack Wootton
- J.A. PrestonMartin Larner
- B.A. 'Smitty' SmithKeller
Recommendations
- 70
Time Out
Hyams boosts the set-up with some heavy-duty action, but the journey follows essentially the same tracks as in '52 for an exciting ride. Hackman is boringly good, but Archer (like Marie Windsor before her) enjoys the more ambivalent role. - 63
Washington Post
It manages to keep you going until the end and delivers the appropriate payoffs as a generic-brand thriller. - 60
Empire
What this sometimes witty time-filler never quite manages is a genuine sense of confined menace. For that, you'll have to get aboard the original when it next plays on TV. - 60
Los Angeles Times
Narrow Margin is nothing if not a hard-edge train thriller and to swathe it in so much atmospheric murk that audiences are going to suspect the premature arrival of cataracts seems counterproductive, at the very least. - 60
TV Guide Magazine
To his credit, writer-cinematographer-director Peter Hyams (RUNNING SCARED) doesn't pretend he's reinventing the wheel here--he just sees to it that all the pieces are in place and that there aren't too many opportunities for the premise to trip over its own implausibilities. - 50
The New York Times
Though the story evokes old movie formulas - from Strangers on a Train to the 1952 film The Narrow Margin, which inspired it - this film does not reinvent them. It dully echos their conventions. - 50
Entertainment Weekly
Narrow Margin, despite a sturdy turn by Gene Hackman as a cynical assistant DA, is a thinly scripted procession of train-movie clichés. - 40
Washington Post
Narrow Margin feels more tired than classic, even if it manages to provide some thrills. There's just not enough there to grab us.
