Justin Chang

Justin Chang reviews Steven Soderbergh's new thriller about a Seattle tech worker with agoraphobia.

At first glance, the commitment-phobic woman at the film's center may seem to embody stereotypes about people her age, but this perceptive Norwegian dramedy doesn't reduce her to those assumptions.

Justin Chang says Compartment No. 6 largely unfolds aboard a passenger train rattling its way through Russia sometime during the late '90s. But it feels like a throwback to an older tradition of railway movies, with their promise of transcontinental intrigue and fateful connections.