Movies - The Cassandra Crossing

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	Movies - The Cassandra Crossing

The Cassandra Crossing is a 1976 British motion picture starring Richard Harris, Ava Gardner, Sophia Loren, Martin Sheen, Burt Lancaster and Lee Strasberg.

Plot synopsis

This suspense film concerns a group of hapless passengers aboard a European transcontinental train bound from Geneva to Stockholm infected with a viral plague from a Swedish terrorist fleeing a botched attack on the U.S. mission at the World Health Organization. Lancaster plays U.S. Colonel Stephen Mackenzie, who wants to send the train across an abandoned ex-Nazi railroad line to a quarantine camp in Poland. The twist, however, is the line crosses a dangerously unsound steel arch bridge known as the Cassandra Crossing. Mackenzie realizes the probability for the train and its passengers to meet with disaster is extremely likely. His thinking is purely devious, if the train doesn’t make it across the bridge, he can claim the terrorists are responsible for putting the passengers in the situation to begin with.

The main passengers include Dr. Jonathan Chamberlain (Harris) and his ex-wife Jennifer Rispoli Chamberlain (Loren) in charge of building up antibodies. Nicole Dressler (Gardner), who is the wife of a German arms dealer embroiled in an affair with a young narcotics trafficker named Robby Navarro (Sheen). Dr. Elena Stradner (Ingrid Thulin), is a WHO physician who wants to save the passengers and desperately tries to convince Mackenzie to stop the train. The passengers remain clueless to their circumstances until, while approaching Paris, they’re re-directed to Nuremberg were the train is sealed with an enclosed oxygen system and an U.S. Army medical team are placed aboard for health and security concerns. While the train is being locked down, a passenger and Holocaust survivor, Marvin Kaplan (Strasberg) discovers the Polish quarantine center is located at the site of an ex-concentration camp where he was interned. Determined not relive such horrific memories, he panics and attempts to escape the train but is shot in the process. While being treated by Dr. Chamberlain, he informs him about the Cassandra Crossing. Chamberlain is very concerned about the risk of crossing such a bridge and soon infected passengers begin to recover from their sickness due to the pure oxygen being distributed through the length of the train. Chamberlain informs Mackenzie and Dr. Stradner of this development so the train doesn’t need to continue into Poland. The latter agrees with doctor but the former, of course, refuses to allow the train to stop en-route. Chamberlain begins to realize Mackenzie has something evil up his sleeve and starts a race against the clock with other passengers to take control of the train from the Army security detail as they race towards an uncertain fate at the Cassandra Crossing.

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