Trying to build on the chemistry so strongly displayed by Woody and Wesley in White Men Can't Jump, Money Train is an uninspired, unfunny, unreservedly lame vehicle that re-teams that film's slam-dunking, bickering buddies.
The plot finds our heroes playing brothers (it's too contrived to explain) and cops - New York transit cops to be precise. About ten minutes in, Woody suggests the possibility of robbing the "money train", the train that collects millions of dollars each night from the city's subway stations. This potential plot point is then ignored for the best part of an hour as our boys tackle a serial killer who's setting fire to token booth workers up and down the lines. A short while later they catch said killer and that plot strand is all wrapped up. Stuck with nothing to do for about 20 minutes of screen time, Wes 'n' Woody crack wise and chase babes. Then, someone remembers that thing about the train - cue the all-action, no-point finale.
It's hard to think of a recent movie as singularly poor at delivering just pure basic entertainment as this. Even though the film was hardly striving for an intellectual undercurrent, the screenplay wilfully abandons plot and set-ups all over the place, lazily thinking the charms of its lead lads will get it through. They don't. Snipes and Harrelson's verbal sparring rarely rises above the formulaic, and Joseph Ruben's direction is just screaming out to have him labelled "the new John Badham".
