A huge hit back in 1976, SILVER STREAK combines comedy, Hitchcock like thrills, action and a winning cast and still holds up today as a lot of fun.
Gene Wilder stars as mild mannered book editor George, looking for plenty of quiet on a Los Angeles to Chicago three-day trip aboard the Amtrak Silver Streak.
Settling into his first class cabin, he meets Hilly (Jill Clayburgh) in the adjoining suite and soon finds a bit of train board romance.
When their first encounter is interrupted by a murdered man being thrown from the train right outside their window, George and Hilly find themselves pulled into a plot with plenty of twists and turns involving everything from Rembrandt to Richard Kiel as a menacing henchman he would virtually repeat the following year battling OO7 in "The Spy Who Loved Me".
(Bond fans will also note Clifton James as a southern sheriff that shares the same brain with JW Pepper from "Live and Let Die".)
Wilder is in peak form as a winning everyday man caught up in a murder spree. When he gets tossed from the train more than once, his adventures getting back on the train provide solid laughs.
Richard Pryor shines as a thief that Wilder meets during one of his adventures trying to get back on the train. Wilder and Pryor's scene at the train station in which Pryor tries to coach Wilder to masquerade as a seventies man of color is still hilarious. Pryor's reactions are priceless, the man had impeccable timing.
Patrick McGoohan rounds out the cast as a wicked bad guy, alongside Ned Beatty as a salesman who may be hiding something.
Writer Colin Higgins would follow this up with "Foul Play" and "Nine To Five", starting a 70's string of hits that are still a lot of fun nearly 40 years later.
With plenty of laughs, suspense and a terrific runaway train climax, SILVER STREAK is a smooth ride that gets a B.
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