Question: After Mary is raped, she begins cleaning herself off in the water in front of Alasdair who immediately figures out what happened and of course wants to tell Rob, so he'll avenge her. But she's extremely adamant that Alasdair not tell Rob about it. But if she REALLY didn't want Rob to know, wouldn't she have waited until she was alone to clean herself up? I'm always confused by this, because when she tells Alasdair to keep quiet, she never seems to be hinting that she doesn't really mean what she says. On the contrary, she's very passionate about it.
Question: Why did the people want to kill the governor in the first place?
Answer: Her husband wanted her dead so that he could further his own political aims and step in as her replacement. She was unpopular enough that he was able to find plenty of co-conspirators to go along.
Question: I've heard this movie contains subliminal images and messages. Is this true and if it is, what are they?
Answer: It is true. The director spliced in a few frames of later scenes in the film throughout the film to "help" the viewer figure out the ending. These frames went by so quickly, the viewers couldn't really see them, but the director thought that maybe the subconscious mind would pick up on these clues.
Question: Were Travis Dane and Marcus Penn planning on killing all the mercenaries at the the end as well as the hostages? I kind of got that impression during Dane's speech towards the end.
Answer: I would say yes they where planning on killing some of the mercs. There is one fact that shows that. if they had plan on putting all the mercs into the copter, then the guys in the engine car should have know at x time get out and move back to get into the copter, giving the fact that they are still in the engine car when it hits the other train tells me they didn't know.
Chosen answer: Dane's speech was for the benefit of the hostages, not mercs. (It could be assumed that they knew he was lying.) Near the end of the film, a helicopter appears the train and prompts the mercs to board. The pilot's announcement of the first pickup (who was actually the porter) as well as the pilot's reaction to the fight between the porter and the female merc indicates that he expected to pick all of them up.
Chosen answer: She wants to clean herself thoroughly ASAP, so as to avoid pregnancy (though that way doesn't work anyway); if she waited until she was alone, it would've been too late to even try.
Xofer