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Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The railroad engineer Andrea Marcocci (Pietro Germi) has been working with his partner and friend Gigi Liverani (Saro Urzì) for thirty years and feels happy and proud with his work, drinking wine after hours with his friends in a bar owned by the former railroad man Ugo. Andrea is married with Sara (Luisa Della Noce) and his young son Sandro (Edoardo Nevola) is very close to him; however Andrea has issues with his unemployed son Marcello (Renato Speziali) and with his pregnant daughter Giulia (Sylva Koscina), whose boy-friend Renato Borghi (Carlo Giuffrè) was forced to marry her. When a suicidal crosses the tracks of his train in a curve, Andrea feels deeply affected by the accident and almost collides with another train. The railroad company investigates the accident and steps Andrea down from his position. The domestic life of Andrea is also affected by his aggressive behavior and Marcello and Giulia leave home. Later Andrea also leaves home and starts to drink until the day Sandro visits his father in a bar."Il Ferroviere" is a human and realistic melodrama with a corny but beautiful conclusion. The drama is watched through the eyes of the clever Sandro that sometimes does not understand what is happening with his dearest family. The stereotype of the Italian people is explored with cries, separations, discussions and a reunion in a Christmas Day, and it is very easy for a Brazilian understand the situations since our people has similar behavior. The acting is top-notch, but the performance of the boy Edoardo Nevola is awesome. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "O Ferroviário" ("The Railroad Man")

Il Ferroviere is the story of train engineer Andrea Marcocci and his family in good times and bad seen mostly through the eyes of his youngest son. Marcocci is a lover of wine and song but he is also an obstinate proud man, his own worst enemy as he manages to alienate family and co-workers in post war strike prone Italy. The film opens with him in high spirits but he is soon beset by problems which include an unmarried pregnant daughter, a deadbeat older son, a work accident that ruins his career, performing scab labor and a drinking problem.Il Ferroviere is a rather mawkish melodrama with weak neorealist roots. The child's viewpoint and the father's shame echoes The Bicycle Thief but with less of a sense of desperation. Italy is a decade out of the war and well on the road to recovery. The problem is the bellicose sometimes brutal Andrea who brooks no descent or criticism.Looking and acting like Kirk Douglas Director Pietro Germi casts himself as Andrea. He is all bombast and not very effective at modulating his moods. He's all rage and melancholy. It is left up to his forever suffering wife to bring out the good in him. Sure he's beat her but he works hard for his family she reasons. In Patriarchal 1956 Italy this is acceptable behavior and to drive that point home we have a scene where Andrea pummels his pregnant daughter while neighbors listen but do not intervene.I find it ironic that director Germi who brilliantly eviscerated Italy's antiquated marriage laws with the classic comedy-satire Divorce Italian Style (61) condones Andrea's family battering by making him an overall sympathetic character. He is quick to be forgiven but his pride won't allow him to be as fast.As a timepiece Il Ferroviere provides some disquieting insights with it's sentimental chauvinism but overall it's little more than a heated family drama with an operatic tone that sounds off key most of the time.

Andrea Marcocci's life takes a tragic turn when family and social problems threaten him with total collapse, pushing him further into drinking and farther from his youngest son, whose own story unfolds innocently enough even in the midst of a painful adult world. In a configuration which would do Welles proud, Pietro Germi not only helms the project with an empathetic directorial eye (making use of a fairly 'restless camera' in the process), he also pens some meaningful dialogue and narration, as well as jumping enthusiastically into the put-upon role of the lead character Andrea. Providing the basis for these three main corners of the film's development, the overall vision is tightly organized and well-crafted. There is an evident love for tracking shots, which are handled well and with theatrical ease. The viewer is whisked through homes, along sidewalks, matching the movement of any number of forward-moving folk. Which is another large aspect of this film: there is solid forward momentum -- towards death or life one cannot say at any point, but the film proceeds there at a confident speed. As a bonus, a bittersweet score interacts quite well with what happens on-screen and evenly matches the tone and pace of the film.With echoes of "The Bicycle Thief", this is a serious (but not devastating) film offering an emotional look at the workman's Italy in the 1950's. What makes it special is the occasional inspired scene or performance which hints at the greatness lurking just beneath its half-sentimental surface. Of special note are the shifts in focus between the various occupants in the story, such as the relationship (and stark contrast) between the dark goings-on and Andrea's young, perceptive boy Sandro. Although the child starts the film intrusively enough, he quickly becomes an integral and engrossing part of the story, taking charge of the narration even and guiding your hand through his family history as much as he interconnects and guides the family in the creation of that history. Certain touches highlight the immense depth he wields, yet also the unmarred innocence. He's at once very young and very old, very naive and very wise ... a startling character which grounds a great deal of the film.Also of worth is the continual upswing and downswing in mood throughout the film. In one moment it seems like a marriage will be mended, the next it seems about to shatter. In one moment a man is drinking his life away, when only a short while later his life is immersed in a scene seemingly straight out of the ending of "It's A Wonderful Life". And this is where there exists a major separation from the tragic Bicycle Thief; as much as life can hit hard and swift, so too can it blindside one with blessings, forgiveness, and hope. Bittersweet though the climax may be, it nonetheless imparts a view that some days are indeed diamonds, to be cherished while you have them, and most days are coal, to be weathered as best one can, striving for a bright horizon that may not come. But strive we must.

This likable and virtually unknown early film by the director of the acclaimed DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE is a domestic drama replete with the essentials of the genre: emotional outbursts, separations, and final tearful reunions. A railroad engineer, husband and father, nearly goes to pieces after accidentally running down a suicide on the tracks and barely avoiding collision with another train. His domestic life is derailed as well. He has an older son who is a bum, an alienated and embittered daughter forced to marry her cad-like seducer. Only his wife and younger son, eloquently played by Edoardo Nevola, are any consolation to him. The film rises above the limitations of soap opera through the beauty of the characterizations and the quality of the performances. Pietro Germi, who directs and stars, is able to give us, through a highly detailed and virtuoso performance, something of the feel of frustration and fear (made worse by excessive drinking) which accompany sensitive fathers with the bulk of their lives already lived. There are some heart-wrenching dramatic moments, as when the small son tries to retrieve his drunken father from the wine tavern and those scenes which show the man's worker friends ostracizing him because he becomes a scab during a railroad strike. The movie bears some obvious resemblances to DeSica's BICYCLE THIEF, the gritty locales, the social commentary mixed in with personal drama, the poignant father-son bond that is the worker's eventual salvation. There are some excesses as well, particularly in the over-acting of Sylva Koscina as the man's daughter. Carlo Rustichelli's lovely musical score is an asset when not being overly cloying.