I'd bet that sometime during the making of Transsiberian, writer-director Brad Anderson was tempted to call the movie Strangers on a Train but deferred out of reverence for Hitchcock.

If the late, great master had seen Anderson's film, though, he probably would have sanctioned the theft. Transsiberian is a model of audience manipulation, a slow-fuse thriller that builds its suspense gradually, in increments, until it has becomes close to unbearable. Then it pushes things just a little further, until you're squirming in your seat.

Anderson, who co-wrote the screenplay with Will Conroy, had previously directed a pair of small-scale pictures (The Machinist,Next Stop Wonderland) and a few episodes of The Shield and The Wire. With Transsiberian, he takes a huge leap in stock, proving capable of maintaining the intensity and focus of a character study while working on a much grander scale.

And the scale is decidedly grand. The setting is the titular express, one of the most famous in the world, which takes a week to traverse the snowy, treacherous terrain between Beijing and Moscow. Aboard are an American couple, the goofy, friendly Roy (Woody Harrelson) and his wife Jessie (Emily Mortimer), who are returning from a humanitarian trip in China organized by Roy's church.

Roy, an overgrown kid with a passion for trains, and Jessie, a photography buff who can't break her smoking habit, are overall a happy couple who differ only in the area of kids: He wants them, but she's not ready. They are taken aback by the hostile nature of the train's underpaid, overworked Russian crew, who are even ruder than Miami International Airport workers.

The couple is a little freaked out, too, by stories they hear from other passengers, such as the man who tells about the Russian police cutting off a man's toes over a typo on his passport.

Then, after a scheduled stop on the route, Roy and Jessie get two cabin mates: Carlos (Eduardo Noriega), a Spaniard who seems to know an awful lot about falsifying documents and cheating customs officials, and Abby (Kate Mara), a runaway from Seattle who wears too much dark eyeliner and regards people with a curiously predatory stare.

The two couples become friends, Jessie ignores Carlos' unmistakably flirtatious stares, and during a stop in Irkutsk, everyone goes out for some sightseeing. When the train resumes its journey, however, one of the four has gone missing.

The disappearance of a character is the first turn in Transsiberian, the first time the malignant dread that's been building beneath the story's ordinary veneer finally materializes, although it is far from the last surprise the film springs. Every detail Anderson puts into the initial half-hour pays off later, from Jessie's shutterbug nature (which results in an excruciatingly suspenseful sequence) to a surly hostess on the train who takes an instant dislike to the naive Americans.

Unlike so many Hollywood thrillers, which too often rely on implausible or telegraphed twists, Transsiberian is carefully structured and designed to make sense when you replay the events in your head. The story is not exactly probable, but it could happen. And the performances help sell the tale's more preposterous turns, especially the British Mortimer (Dear Frankie, Bright Young Things), who gets to display an unusually wide range that goes far beyond terrified heroine.

As a Russian cop, Ben Kingsley, who appears in a brief early scene, gets a terrific mid-film re-entrance that adds another layer of tension to an already nerve-racking situation. Every time you think things can't possibly get any worse in Transsiberian, they do, and Anderson is an expert at turning small details -- a partly-opened backpack, or a small drop of blood on a glove -- into weapons of suspense. Hitchcock would be proud.

Cast: Woody Harrelson, Emily Mortimer, Eduardo Noriega, Kate Mara, Ben Kingsley

Director: Brad Anderson

Screenwriters: Brad Anderson, Will Conroy

Producer: Julio Fernandez

A First Look Pictures release. Running time: 110 minutes. Vulgar language, violence, gore, sexual situations, adult themes. Playing at area theaters.

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