Review of Runaway Train (1985) by Noel V — 17 Sep 2010

Tremendous action film. Possibly the best of Konchalovsky's American work, the film vividly captures the filth and danger of a wretchedly run maximum security prison, then, when it shifts scene to the eponymous train, the disjointed image of rusted metal hurtling through wildly beautiful landscapes.

Rebecca de Morney is almost unrecognizably unsexy wrapped in grimy winterwear and with diesel soot in her face yet somehow moving--the film's humane heart--and Roberts is suitably goofy yet intense, as the callow prison punk whose illusions eventually fall away. But this is really John Ryan and above all Jon Voight's movie--the two match each other feral grin for feral grin, and Voight's eyes have this harrowing effect of growing more intense as they narrow into tiny glittering pinpricks.

Then there is Konchalovsky doing Kurosawa's bidding (it's his story) as he heedlessly hurls snow and ice and wind at the players in their out-of-control vehicle as if he were The Emperor Himself. Vividly staged and shot, tautly paced, with a gritty realism and intensity few action films ever get to touch much less successfully emulate, it's an amazing work.