The Cassandra Crossing

About The Cassandra Crossing

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

This suspense film concerns a group of hapless passengers aboard a European transcontinental train bound from Geneva to Stockholm. They are infected with a viral plague from a Swedish terrorist, who is fleeing a botched attack on the U.S. mission at the fictional International Health Organization.

Burt 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 Janov, Poland. The twist, however, is that the line crosses a dangerously unsound steel arch bridge known as the Cassandra Crossing. Mackenzie understands that the bridge might collapse as the train passes over it. He reasons that, if the train does not make it across the bridge, he can lay the blame for the situation on the terrorists.