Review of Runaway Train (1985) by Lee A — 07 Oct 2011

A prison break and runaway locomotive thriller as harsh and unforgiving as its bleak Alaskan setting, "Runaway Train" transcends the unimaginative title to become a little-seen, hard-bitten, brutal, intelligent mini classic.

Jon Voight stars as Oscar "Manny" Manheim, a ferocious murderer and bank robber who has been welded into a solitary confinement cell for three years by his nemesis, warden Rankin (John P Ryan). However, Manny is a hero among fellow inmates, and news of his appeal is greeted by the other cons, including hotheaded, none-too-bright boxer Buck (Eric Roberts) and loyal friend Jonah (Edward Bunker), with jubilation and a mini-riot.

Rankin can't wait for Manny to try escaping again so he can have him shot; he also coerces another convict to make an attempt on Manny's life in a sneak knife attack. Manny survives, and resolves to break out no matter what the cost, and enlists the dim-witted Buck to slip him out of the cell block in a laundry basket.

From the prison yard, Manny and Buck make an escape through the sewers and survive a three hundred foot drop into a freezing river; they then face a trek across the Alaskan wilderness in minus thirty temperatures, arriving at a desolate railway station. Here they choose a train for their transport to safety...

The title probably gives it away that they pick the wrong train, an aging, ice encrusted convoy of four engines. The engineer suffers a heart attack and dies without being able to shut the vehicle down properly, and the train soon burns off it's breaks and starts building speed in an unstoppable rampage across the icy landscape.

The two escapees come to discover they are not the only people on the train; they later discover another railway employee Sarah (Rebecca DeMornay) who had been asleep in one of the other engines when the disaster started out.

From here on, the action switches between the uneasy alliance of Manny, Buck and Sarah, as they make perilous progress from engine to engine in an attempt to slow down the train; to the men in the control room tasked with attempting to avert disaster as the runaway ploughs along the track towards other vehicles; and the hellbent Rankin, who is determined to hunt down Manny and kill him.

Written by legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, and helmed by Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky, "Runaway Train" is a hybrid of two B-movie genres that moves beyond Hollywood conventions - it is a bleak and relentless vision, pitting violent characters against a starkly beautiful, violent environment as it builds towards its magnificent, fatalistic conclusion.

There are no likable characters in this film - all the inmates of Stonehaven Maximum Security Prison are dangerous, aggressive robbers, murderers and rapists, and the men that guard them aren't much better. The railway dispatchers in the control room are all sexist, arrogant and pigheaded blusterers - there's no cynical but kindly characters like Walter Matthau's Lieutenant Garber in "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" trying to avert this crisis.

The few female characters are mostly bit parts - a female prison guard getting leered at by the inmates, a secretary getting bellowed at by her chauvinistic bosses; and Rebecca De Mornay is stripped of all her usual glamour, bundled up in overalls and face caked with grease, and given all the bum lines in an underwritten part: "Boy, I guess you guys picked the wrong train.".

The film's pressure cooker atmosphere and volatile relationships between characters is used to explore the primal instincts of violent men - Buck is portrayed as essentially good-natured, but hot-headed and corrupted by time inside; when brutally battered in the film's most powerful scene, he reverts back to survival instincts.

Manny is compared to an animal early in the film by Warden Rankin when quizzed about the inhumanity of keeping someone welded in a cell for three years. Even the initially timid Sarah reverts to a feral yell of "Kill Him!" when Buck and Manny have their final, decisive face off.

It's a grim, exciting film, and the excellent performances of Voight and Roberts makes you actually care about two hardened criminals.

Roberts, whose career has otherwise been a colorful, mostly straight-to-DVD parade of cartoon villains and leathery crime bosses, is worth his Oscar Nomination here, imbuing Buck with just the right amount of little-boy-lost pity inside the youthful, excitable statutory rapist who idolizes Manny.

It's Jon Voight's picture, though. Like many of the male actors who came to prominence in the 70's - Hoffman, Pacino, DeNiro, for example - Voight has been a shadow of himself in his heyday over most of the last three decades.

However, Voight surpasses his most famous work in films like "Midnight Cowboy", "The Champ" and "Coming Home" here - he is simply mesmerizing in a visceral performance as Manny.

He's a man with a lifetime of violence, yet has the intellect to understand what he has become; he's weary and defeated, but a fierce survival instinct keeps pushing him onwards - he knows he's going to die, but he's absolutely determined to do it on his own terms.

Late in the film, before making his final leap of destiny to the lead train and a confrontation with Rankin (who's dropped in by helicopter onto the speeding, out of control train in one of the film's unlikeliest moments), Manny sneers at Buck and Sara, "We all die alone.".

And it's telling that Manny is happy with that - rather than look into the eyes of his nemesis when the final moment comes, Manny prefers to stand by himself and face his fate, literally, head on.

It's a riveting performance, for which Voight was nominated for Best Actor, but lost out to William Hurt in "Kiss of the Spider Woman".

The other star of the film is the train itself - filmed using real Alaskan railroad locomotives where today CGI would probably stand in, you can feel the terrifying bulk and velocity of these beasts as they plummet headlong along the track.

"Runaway Train" is not a cheerful experience, but it is a tight, exciting and intelligent thriller with a surprisingly emotional conclusion.