Wes Anderson’s fifth feature puts three brothers on a luxury train through India and lets the itinerary fall apart. The Darjeeling Limited runs 91 minutes and carries a tagline that states its whole project outright: “I want us to be brothers again, like we used to be.”
That line belongs to Francis Whitman, played by Owen Wilson, the eldest of the three and the one with his head wrapped in bandages after a near-fatal motorcycle accident. He has drawn up a strict schedule with help from his assistant, Brendan, and he has confiscated his brothers’ passports so nobody gets off the train early.
The film premiered at the 64th Venice International Film Festival in competition for the Golden Lion and opened September 29, 2007 through Fox Searchlight Pictures. It earned $35 million against a $17.5 million budget and scored 67 out of 100 on Metacritic. We land at 6.7 of 10 — a film with a real ache inside it and a habit of hiding that ache behind its own furniture.
Trailer, via SearchlightPictures.
Three Brothers and a Confiscated Passport
The setup is clean. Peter Whitman, played by Adrien Brody, boards the Darjeeling Limited as it pulls out of a station and finds his brothers already aboard. The three have not spoken since their father’s funeral a year earlier. Francis wants reconciliation, a spiritual journey, and — secretly — a meeting with their mother, Patricia, played by Anjelica Huston, who has become a nun at a Christian convent in the Himalayas.
Peter and Jack, played by Jason Schwartzman, do not know about the mother until Francis tells them. They are furious. Francis knew they would not come if he said so earlier, and he was right.
The grief is carried as luggage. The brothers haul suitcases stamped with their father’s initials, along with other items that belonged to him. The train moves through countryside and stops at Hindu and Sikh temples. Tension builds. Peter and Jack tire of Francis’s control.
A Fight, an Ejection, and a Letter from Patricia
The break comes as a physical altercation on the train. Other passengers are upset. The chief steward, played by Waris Ahluwalia, has been annoyed by the brothers repeatedly through the trip, and he has them ejected. Brendan quits, then reboards and hands Francis a letter from Patricia. The letter implies she does not want to see them.
That is the hinge of the film, and it is the best thing in it. A quest that was already off-course — the source lists the culprits as over-the-counter pain killers, Indian cough syrup, and pepper spray — collapses into plain rejection. The brothers decide to leave India, go their separate ways, and never come back. Anderson does not soften the letter. He lets it land.
The running order of the trip, as Francis planned it against what actually happens:
| Beat | Francis’s itinerary | What the film delivers |
|---|---|---|
| Boarding | Reunite aboard the Darjeeling Limited | Peter boards as the train pulls out |
| Mid-journey | Temples, spiritual self-discovery | Hindu and Sikh temples, rising tension |
| Reveal | Not disclosed in advance | Patricia is a nun in the Himalayas |
| Breaking point | Not scheduled | Physical fight; brothers ejected |
| Aftermath | Reconciliation | Letter implies Patricia refuses to see them |
What the Cast Carries
Wilson plays Francis as a man managing his own recovery like a logistics problem, and the bandages do most of the work for him. Brody gives Peter a quiet, withholding weight. Schwartzman, who co-wrote the film with Anderson and Roman Coppola, plays Jack with a nervousness that never quite settles.
The supporting cast is deep and mostly brief. Amara Karan is Rita. Wallace Wolodarsky is Brendan. Barbet Schroeder is the Mechanic. Irrfan Khan is the Father. Camilla Rutherford is Alice. Bill Murray is the Businessman. A. P. Singh is the Taxi Driver. Natalie Portman appears in a cameo role, and she also stars with Schwartzman in Hotel Chevalier, Anderson’s short prologue to the film.
The cameos are a problem. Bill Murray and Natalie Portman are names the film does not need, and their presence pulls attention away from three performances that are doing the real work. Anderson’s casts have always been trophies. Here the trophies crowd the shelf.
Where the Film Actually Lands
The Darjeeling Limited received generally favorable reviews and was named among the Top Films of the Year at the 2007 NYFCO Awards. That listing is a year-end honor from the New York Film Critics Online, not a prize for a single category, and it puts the film in company broader than its own modest scale suggests.
What holds it back is the same thing that defines it. Anderson’s control is total — the symmetry, the luggage, the strict itinerary — and the film keeps converting feeling into arrangement. When Francis’s plan collapses, the movie briefly breathes. Then it tidies up again.
The strongest argument for the film is that its mess is deliberate. The pain killers, the cough syrup, the pepper spray, the confiscated passports: all of it is a system for avoiding the letter from Patricia. When the letter arrives, the system fails, and for a few minutes the brothers are just three men on a train who have lost their father and their mother both.
The weakest argument is that Anderson already knows this and says it anyway. The Darjeeling Limited is a comedy-drama about grief that keeps its grief at arm’s length, and 91 minutes is enough time to notice the arm.
It is worth ranking the three brothers by how much the film gives them, because the imbalance is the film’s real flaw:
- Francis — the engine of the plot, the bandages, the itinerary, the secret. Wilson gets the most to do and does it.
- Jack — the co-writer’s role, nervous and watchful, but the film never decides what he wants.
- Peter — Brody is excellent and underused; the middle brother stays a mood rather than a person.
That ranking is also a map of what the film could have been. Peter’s grief is the one the movie never opens. He carries the father’s luggage, he boards the train mid-motion, and then he mostly watches.
The Letter Is the Only Honest Scene
The Darjeeling Limited is a good film with a great premise and a habit of preferring its own design to its own people. The Venice competition slot, the NYFCO listing, and the $35 million gross against a $17.5 million budget all describe a movie that found its audience and earned its place.
None of that makes the middle brother whole. Everything before the letter is travel; everything after it is the only honest scene the brothers get. Anderson built a movie about three men avoiding a conversation and then made the conversation the best part. That is the tension the film never resolves, and it is why the score sits where it does rather than higher.
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