LAST STOP UNION STATION

A faltering Hollywood star agrees to boost her career by joining the Hollywood Victory Caravan for three weeks in 1942. Guess what happens aboard that train.

Jacqueline Love may indeed be, as she thinks herself, “the best actress of her generation,” but her short fuse and unfiltered opinions have made her too high maintenance for everyone else on set. When Miriam Dreyfus, her new agent, urges her to reset her public image by bolstering the war effort, she’s not eager to agree, but the absence of other job prospects changes her mind. Once she’s passed sniffy Ginger Rogers, who’s bailed out because she won’t share a compartment with Jackie (a nice touch) and boarded the train to Chicago, she meets a crowd that includes her rival Alina Larson, whose resume seems to have been cribbed from skating ingenue Sonja Henie, but who’s a lot frostier; Alina’s co-star and current swain, Garrett Edwards; Eddie Rivas, the former fling who’s replaced bandleader Howie Barber at the last minute; and veteran star Ralph Holmes, whose recent history of conspiring with the Nazis to steal military secrets clearly marks him as even more in need of rehabilitation than Jackie. Shortly after the train arrives in Chicago, the porter discovers Ralph, who’s done nothing to endear himself to his fellow passengers, smothered to death in his bunk. Detective Walter Brink, of the Chicago PD, thinks the death was an accident, but Jackie, starved for new roles and excitement, decides to investigate and improbably partners with Officer Grace Sullivan to track down the guilty party aboard a train crawling with possibilities.

A period valentine with a string of surprises, the best of which lands with a pleasing bang.