There’s something about a moving train that makes paranoia feel earned. You’re stuck in a metal tube hurtling through Europe, and everyone around you might be exactly who they say they are, or they might be waiting for the right moment to put a bullet in your skull. It’s claustrophobic cinema at its finest, and THE TRAIN, opening in Germany and Austria this September, understands that better than most spy thrillers have in years.
What makes this one different isn’t just the setting. It’s who’s behind the camera. Director Boris Volodarsky isn’t your typical action filmmaker who watched a lot of Bond movies and called it research. He wrote The KGB’s Poison Factory, Stalin’s Agent, Assassins, and The Murder of Alexander Litvinenko. The guy knows how intelligence operations actually work, which means the film doesn’t just look like espionage, it moves like it. No gadgets that wouldn’t exist, no dramatic monologues when a professional would just shoot you and move on.
The story follows Major Alex Stirling, a former SAS operative played by Dennis Dewall, who’s traveling on the Majestic Imperator, a luxury train making its final run from Vienna to Prague. He’s got his teenage daughter Olivia with him, and what’s supposed to be a farewell voyage for Europe’s elite quickly turns into something a lot more dangerous. Dewall’s been building a cult following with films like Spy Capital and The Vienna Procedure, and here he’s playing someone who knows exactly when violence is necessary and when it’s a liability. It’s restrained work, which is refreshing when most action leads think intensity means yelling louder.
But the real surprise is Madalina Bellariu Ion as Natalie Krug, an agent who rewrites what a femme fatale can be in 2026. You might recognize Bellariu Ion from The Young Pope opposite Jude Law, or Take Cover with Scott Adkins. Here, she’s playing someone who doesn’t need to announce her danger. Krug is the kind of operative who can dismantle you with a smile or a silence, and Bellariu Ion makes every scene she’s in feel like a trap you didn’t see coming. She’s not window dressing for the male lead’s story. She is the story, or at least a significant chunk of it.
The father-daughter dynamic between Stirling and Olivia, played by 16-year-old Anouk Auer, gives the film emotional weight that keeps it from turning into pure action spectacle. Their relationship feels genuine, which makes every threat on that train hit harder. When your kid is three compartments away and you can’t be sure who’s watching, suddenly every decision carries consequences beyond just your own survival.
THE TRAIN itself becomes a character. Polished wood, crystal glassware, private compartments where anything could be happening behind closed doors. It’s the kind of old-world luxury that masks new-world power plays. Everyone on board has money, connections, or secrets worth protecting, and the confined space means you can’t just walk away from a bad situation. You’re locked in until the next stop, and by then it might be too late.
Volodarsky shot across six cities: Vienna, London, Malta, Bangkok, Budapest, and Prague. Each location adds texture without feeling like tourism footage. The film has an international scope that feels earned, not manufactured for marketing purposes. The production company Westside Studios and producer Dennis Dewall assembled a cast that reflects that reach.
The ensemble includes German profiler Suzanne Grieger-Langer playing a character called Profiler Suzanne, which suggests someone decided to just lean into authenticity. Alan Burgon, currently starring in ABBA and known for The Campfire Story, The Net, and Heroes and Cowards, shows up as MI6’s Eric Jones.
Peter Ormond, who’s been in everything from Terminator: Dark Fate to The Crown, plays an auctioneer with the kind of authority that makes you believe he could sell you your own secrets. Martin Ploderer portrays Leo Goldberg, THE TRAIN’s enigmatic owner. Polina Kuleshova, who holds the Miss Europe title, plays Julia Goldberg with intelligence that cuts through the glamour. Leonie Bielesz delivers a sharp performance as Jill Telfer, embedded in the intelligence operations subplot. Nadine Grosinger rounds out the Goldberg family as Miriam.
What separates THE TRAIN from most contemporary action films is its commitment to practical work. The fight choreography, handled by martial arts expert Ali Kabalan, combines Wing Chun and Wushu into sequences that prioritize efficiency over flash. The actors performed their own combat scenes, and Dewall went further, doing his own high-risk stunts on moving trains across Europe. No shortcuts, no digital safety nets. Just an actor willing to hang off the side of a train because it’s the shot the scene needs.
That approach extends to the film’s overall aesthetic. The poster is sleek and ominous without overselling the product. The September 10, 2026 release in Germany and Austria will be followed by a London premiere and international rollout, which suggests confidence in the material beyond just the domestic market.
Spy thrillers live or die on whether you believe the stakes, and THE TRAIN earns that belief through specificity. It’s not trying to reinvent the genre, just remind audiences what made it compelling in the first place: smart people in impossible situations, confined spaces where trust is a luxury nobody can afford, and action that feels like it could actually break bones. When your director has written extensively about real-world assassinations and intelligence operations, you get espionage that doesn’t rely on Hollywood shortcuts.
So here’s what you’re getting: a train racing across Europe, a cast that can actually handle the material, and a director who knows the difference between what looks cool and what could actually happen. Sometimes that’s all a thriller needs. The luxury setting, the international intrigue, the confined space where escape isn’t an option – it’s familiar territory, sure. But when it’s executed with this much attention to how espionage actually functions, familiar starts to feel dangerous again.
