By Timothy Chow

 Sud Express is a move whose aims and goals were never really stated at all. The film is based around the Sud Express, a train that runs from Lisbon, Portugal to Paris, France and six tales that are interwoven along that route.
The movie offers no real conventional take on a plot or a story, or even a moral message of any sort. It just gently plods along, looking at each storyline and its characters' emotions: the racist Parisian taxi driver who fears his wife is cheating on him; the two best friends in Spain who are torn apart when one leaves for university (the best storyline I found, not necessarily the most complex or most developed, but the one that had the most potential and the one that spoke most to me); the group of friends in Portugal who try to eke out a living amidst the heavy discrimination against blacks.

The movie has no solution, no drama for the sake of drama. It's a take on real life - that things are, crap happens, and we have to deal with all of it. It doesn't let off easy answers or convenient situations to make us feel happy and uplifted afterwards. Similarly it doesn't kneel to the death and destruction so often epitomized by movies that deal with darker issues. For plain entertainment, it fails indubitably if you were under the impression that you would have fun times watching it. Nonetheless, it's a thoughtful and engaging look at life in three countries and that the human condition is the same human condition that we all face after all.

3 ½ stars out of 5