Review of Runaway Train (1985) by Ian M — 08 Oct 2010

There are a handful of male-oriented action films so tough, so shamelessly masculine, that they transcend standard he-man heroics and become something else altogether: Thief, Southern Comfort, The Thing, Rolling Thunder, To Live and Die in LA.

When I watch these films I become so aware of my own male agency that my balls feel like a pair of rocks. Runaway Train sets the bar for this type of filmmaking. The premise - three people trapped on a locomotive hurtling through the Alaskan wilderness without a driver - allows it to work as both a blistering action adventure and a potent allegorical fable on the role of individual responsibility and free will in the most extreme situations.

Jon Voight plays a character so manly his name is Manny Manheim. He flings his own blood into another man's face and spits out such thrilling dog-eat-dog dialogue as "One must count on oneself - nobody else" and (my favourite) "I'm at war with the world and everybody in it.

" At such moments my balls no longer feel like rocks - they feel like LEAD. Actual lead. Runaway Train makes my balls feel like they're made of lead. If you're a man who wants to know what it feels like to have balls of lead, watch this film.

If you're a woman who wants to know what it feels like to have balls of lead, watch this film and you may well have grown a pair by the time it's over.