What makes it different from others?

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The first must-see film of the year.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

***SPOILERS*** Tracking down the guy fellow DEA Agent Emmett Larkin payed by Jerome Ehlers, who has a striking resemblance to he late Brtish actor Laurence Harvey, disgraced and on the lam, from breaking out of federal prison, DEA Agent Paul Blake, Antonio Sabato Jr, finally finds the creep on the other side of the world. It's in the wilds of Australia that Larkin has made plans to steal a number of the country's deadly poison gas canisters also known as weapons of mass destruction-WMDS-to use for his own selfish and greedy purposes. Not in what he lead his boss in this operation fanatical environmentalist and president of the EDL, Earth Defense League, Kate Beahan, Eve Lambert, into thinking that he's doing it to save the environment for future generations. Larkin wants to us them to blackmail the Australian Government to pay him off, with 25 million dollars, or else the city of Sidney with a population of 5 million will end up a ghost town! With everyone in it dead when he detonates the poison gas canisters that he'll ship into the city under the cover of darkness by rail! In the train that Larkin and his crew are planning to hijack!Spotting-on a tip-Larkin on the train at the loading station Blake uses pretty Sidney native Rhonda Newcombe (Kimberley Davies), whom earlier at the train station he almost knocked off her feet, as a front to keep Larkin and his gang from knowing that he's on to them. Blake wants Larkin to think that he and his lovely date Rhonda are taking a romantic ride through the Australian countryside. Rhonda at first thinking that Blake is some love-sick romantic looking for action is later sadly disappointed in finding out that it's Larkin not her that he's after and it has nothing at all to do with love! Straight or gay! It has to do with him getting even with Larkin for setting him up in a phony drug sting as well, in finding out later, preventing him and his gang from pulling off a super 9/11 on one of Australia's major cities!Good action scenes with Blake-undercover-knocking off Larkin's men one by one as the terror train hurdlers towards its target Sidney with only minutes if not seconds left, with the timers on the gas bombs set to go off, to stop it. Back in Australia's top intelligence agency's headquarters Commander, the guy who runs the whole show, Haggarty played by Nick Tate has to make the biggest decision of his entire life! Have the runaway train blows to smatterings and kill everyone on it, hijackers as well as Innocent civilians, or allow it to smash through city limits and wipe the city of Sidney off the face of the earth!***SPOILERS*** Exceing and Unbearable tension as Rhonda, not Blake as you would suspect, saves the day by disconnecting the train's locomotive that has the poison gas canisters on it and having it incinerated, by attack helicopters, thus rendering them harmless! Larkin seeing that his whole grand plan has suddenly, thanks to both Blake & Rhonda, gone up in smoke tries to make a run for it only to find, guess who, an angry and take no BS or prisoners former DEA Agent Paul Blake standing in his way! In the end it was poor and naive Eve Lambart who got the very worst of it from both her partner in crime Larkin as well as from Blake and the Australian Government! Foolisly thinking that Larkin was really interested in saving the environment Eve unknowingly made it possible for him to destroy it, with the poison gas canisters, for many many centuries to come!

Die Hard, Under Siege, Death Train, even Runaway Train, it has been done. Throw in a cute non-violent activist who falls for he wrong -- yes terrorist -- guy and you've got a mediocre movie. All the morally flawed characters are killed off and no one in the audience sheds a tear (perhaps when the helicopter is shot down, but I doubt it). Nice to see the hero kill off the bad guy, but not prevent the actual disaster from happening. That was maybe the only original twist (if you can speak of a twist) of the story. 'Seconds to Spare' fades away to a bad video game when comparing the Australian ACIA to the CTU unit in '24', 'Death Train' or even 'The Cassandra Crossing' Still, for a TV movie all ingredients were there and delivered. Nice predictable pastime, but that is all. Tolerable

Basically what we have here is a bargain basement action thriller set mainly on a train and utilising numerous bits of other film's scripts (spot the photocopied plots from Under Siege 2, Death Train and numerous others here).Add every cliché in the book, some truly awful acting, standard issue one liners that don't work, various cardboard characters, the token eye candy and a cast that seemed to be only in this as they desperately needed the money to a budget of about ten dollars and this is the mess you wind up with.The locomotives acted better than the cast, probably because they did not have to recite the cheesy clichéd dialogue that basically ran from start to finish, it is little wonder that one comment from an Australian (where this Antipodean codswallop was made and is set) wanted to hang his head in shame that they where producing stuff like this.Stick to Mad Max films please.......

For every Natalie Imbruglia there are 10 Sarah Vandenberghs; there's a carload of Rachel Blakelys for every Kylie Minogue. What I'm getting at is that post-"Neighbours" life can be a sorry one - consider Kimberley Davies, aka Annalise. Now back on her home turf after an unsuccessful turn in the US (chiefly in "Pacific Palisades," a series from Aaron Spelling where she played a sexy real estate agent which was so unsuccessful that the producers drafted in Joan Collins - now THAT'S desperate), she's stuck in stuff like "Seconds to Spare." And she still can't act, but fortunately she's still gorgeous, which is one of the few things this Australian-American TV movie has going for it.To be honest, no one has the right to expect much from a movie where the names "Carlton America" and "Antonio Sabato Jr." appear in the opening credits; ASJr plays an ex-DEA agent chasing a criminal to Australia, who's fallen in league with a band of eco-terrorists who steal some canisters of nerve gas to make a statement against the Australian government's stance on toxic dumping, and hijack a train in order to get their point across. "Die Hard" on a train it's not (that was "Under Siege 2," anyway), in more ways than one; the movie not only lacks real suspense but has villains who are ultimately and infinitely more interesting than our plank-esque hero - the leader of the treehuggers (Kate Beahan) doesn't want to use violence to win, which puts her in conflict with the main villain (Jerome Ehlers, clearly enjoying himself).Chugging along at a pace considerably slower than the train, with a lacklustre score and effects work, and dire acting and dialogue ("All the while she was doing my root canal, my husband was..."), there's not a surprise to be had in the entire movie - with the exception of the name of co-executive producer Sabato Jr's production company (Namtab Productions Inc. - though given his uselessness, Etimtab Productions Inc. would have been more appropriate). Unless Nine Network Australia wanted to prove that the US doesn't have a monopoly on making naff actioners, there's not much of a point to this; and unless you want to see Nick Tate in something even sillier than "Space: 1999," there's no reason to watch.Kimberley Davies still fills out a white T-shirt wonderfully, however. (Okay, there's at least two reasons to watch.)