Runaway Train
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
In the 1980s, during the heyday of video store rentals, one film company stood out as the king of B moviemaking—The Cannon Group. If fast, trashy, violent and often dumb action movies were what you wanted, Cannon delivered. Titles such as American Ninja, Tango and Cash, and many of the Death Wish sequels starring Charles Bronson were some of their low-brow classics.
On occasion, however, Cannon swung for the fences, trying to make something better, something prestigious. And in 1985 it connected with the film Runaway Train, a raw, fierce action classic absolutely bursting with emotion and brains. Directed by Andrei Konchalovsky, the film is based on an unproduced screenplay by the great Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa…and its brilliant pedigree shows.
The convicts are trapped as they race toward almost certain death across the frozen wilderness.
The story concerns two convicts suffering in the cold squalor of a remote, maximum-security prison in Alaska. Desperate to escape the prison’s brutal warden, the two convicts make their way through a sewer and sneak aboard a freight train believing it will take them to freedom. There’s just one problem: the engineer keels over, suddenly dead from a heart attack, and the locomotive speeds out of control. Unable to stop the train, the convicts are trapped as they race toward almost certain death across the frozen wilderness.
Actors Jon Voight and Eric Roberts portray the convicts and they are brilliant. As usual, Roberts is twitching and electric. He plays Buck, a mentally challenged criminal with little thought about the consequences of his actions. Voight plays Manny, a hardened convict considered so dangerous that his cell doors were welded shut for three years to keep the guards and other cons safe from him.
When the railroad company becomes aware of the speeding train, its workers frantically search for ways to stop it from crashing. Meanwhile, the vengeful prison warden gives chase in a helicopter. Armed with a rifle, he’s determined to kill Manny. Played by the great character actor John P. Ryan, the warden considers Manny more animal than human being.
There have been other movies about runaway trains, but for my money this one is the best. There are no computer-generated visuals. Its high-velocity action scenes are explosive and visceral, as are the savage passions of Manny and Buck who clash inside the speeding train. While buck fantasizes about how fun life will be when he escapes to safety, Manny is cynical. To him, they are doomed by the other kind of runaway train they’re on—a meaningless life; one from which there is also no escape.
Give the Cannon Group credit for stepping out of their B-movie comfort zone and making a thought-provoking action film like Runaway Train. I give it a terrific four out of four stars.
