The 'Girl with no Brain'?

Emily Blunt stars in an adaptation of the best-selling thriller by Paula Hawkins. But the film fails to pick up speed, writes Nicholas Barber.

Paula Hawkins' novel, The Girl on the Train, has sold 15 million copies around the world, largely due to its irresistible concept.

Its heroine, Rachel, is a miserable, alcoholic divorcee who gazes at the same house twice every day when she commutes by train between London and suburbia.

She likes to imagine that the man and woman she sees in that house have an idyllic marriage, just as she used to do when she lived nearby, before her inability to get pregnant drove her away from her husband and towards the bottle.

But her illusions about this seemingly perfect couple are shattered when she spots the woman, Megan, kissing another man.

The next day Megan vanishes, and Rachel fears that she might have been involved.

The problem is, she was so drunk on the night of the disappearance, she can't remember what she did, or how she ended up so badly cut and bruised.

It's a gripping Rear-Window-on-wheels premise, but it's surprising how little the novel makes of it. Rachel doesn't do much detective work herself: She mopes around for three hundred pages until her memories conveniently return, and then she mopes around for a hundred pages after that.

What worse is that nothing is at stake for her, given that she is already at rock bottom, nor is she in any danger.

That is, she isn't in any danger until she stupidly throws herself in harm's way, because the book wouldn't have had a climax otherwise.

If that weren't irritating enough, she isn't a girl - she's in her thirties - and the fact that she sometimes travels by train turns out to be barely relevant.

"The Woman with no Brain" would have been a more appropriate title.

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