Avalanche Express

I've mentioned before that pretty much every big-name star out there who made enough movies had at least one dud in their career. For Lee Marvin, that movie might well be Avalanche Express.

The movie starts off in the Soviet Union, with a bunch of high-ranking KGB officials discussing a germ warfare project code-named "Winter Harvest" and how information about it is getting leaked to the west by some guy named "Angelo". Angelo has passed information on a cassette tape to an American in Zürich, and the information keeps getting passed until the head of the operation, Haller (Mike Connors) can decode it. The Americans should meet Angelo at La Scala opera house in Milan at a particular time when he will reveal himself.

Angelo is really the code name of Marenkov (Robert Shaw), a KGB general who is not one of the hard-liners, and troubled that they're gaining the upper hand, hence going forward with Winter Harvest and his planned defection to reveal everything he knows about it. Haller and second-in-command Harry Wargrave (Lee Marvin) want to debrief Marenkov right then and there, but he already agreed that he'd only be debriefed when he reached the US. Plus, he's got a plan of his own.

Marenkov wants to defeat the head of the hard-liners, General Bunin (Maximilian Schell), but to do that is going to require getting him out in the open. So, Marenkov and Wargrave come up with the idea that they take the "Atlantic Express" train that goes from Milan to Rotterdam in the Netherlands (even though none of these places are near the Atlantic) from where he can be flown to the US. This would give the Soviets ample opportunity to try to get Marenkov, opportunities which are a double-edged sword as the CIA can flush out a whole bunch of Soviet agents and liquidate them.

Among the Americans who were already involved in getting the casette from Angelo are Leroy (Joe Namath) and Elsa Lang (Linda Evans). Complicating matters is that Elsa and Harry have an estranged romantic relationship, something that seems like it would be a problem amongst spies, but what do I know. At any rate, the train inexorably makes its way toward Rotterdam, with various groups of Soviet agents trying to ambush the train on one occasion, and setting off an avalanche (hence the title) in the Swiss Alps. Will Marenkov make it to America?

The big problem with Avalance Express is that it seems more like a bunch of set pieces with a threadbare plot, and a bunch of characters who are given overly complicated relationships. Robert Shaw and director Mark Robson both died during post-production, and from what I've read Shaw was already quite ill during primary filming. I can't imagine the Soviets being this violent, either, considering the number of innocents around, but then, we probably wouldn't have much of a movie.

I remember when TCM did a spotlight on the special effects of MGM's A. Arnold Gillespie that one of the modern-day effects artists they had discussing the movie said a big problem trying to film water effects is that the drops can only get so small, so if you're using miniatures you want them as large as possible lest the water droplets look too big. That was the same problem that the avalanche (which I think is supposed to be the highlight of the movie) has, only with snow instead of liquid water.

Overall, Avalanche Express doesn't really work, and feels like a tired late-era entry in a genre that had been played out. It's available on DVD, though, should you wish to watch for yourself.