Runaway Train (1985).
Manny is a convict who’s spent the last three years locked in solitary confinement who’s just won a civil rights case to land him back in genpop. Rankin, the Warden at Alaska’s Stonehaven Maximum Security Prison, has it in for him…so much so that he orchestrates an assassination during a prison boxing match. Manny survives and decides that the only way he’s going to survive going forward is to escape. Buck, a young prisoner who idolizes him, helps him break out.
After a taxing jaunt through the snowy Alaskan wilderness, the two hop onto a train undetected. Unfortunately for them and the female assistant conductor, the train conductor dies, leaving the train barreling down the track. With a railroad crew trying to ideate on ways to stop the rig and the Warden’s helicopter in hot pursuit, the three must survive the ride, if they can survive each other.
The film was originally written by Akira Kurosawa after reading a 1963 Life magazine article about a runaway train. He was set to film the picture in upstate New York in 1966, but funding fell through and he went on to work on Tora! Tora! Tora! He had intended for Peter Fonda and Peter Faulk to play the leads. Later in 1982, the script resurfaced, and the Nippon Herald company asked Francis Ford Coppola to recommend a director, and he recommended Andrei Konchalovsky. Konchalovsky had been working in Russia for a while, but was in production on his first American film, Maria’s Lovers.
Jon Voight and Eric Roberts were cast as Manny and Buck. Voight was familiar with Konchalovsky, who he’d wanted to direct Rhinestone Heights in 1979, a film that was never made. Karen Allen, who was just coming off of Starman, was tapped for the role of Sara, but ultimately dropped out of the project, leaving the door open for Rebecca De Mornay, who had just hit it big with her role in Risky Business. Filming took place in Montana, with second unit footage shot on location in Alaska, and the music was provided by Trevor Jones, a composer who had just had hits with The Dark Crystal and Excalibur.
Warden Rankin’s reaction to Manny escaping is unusual, to say the least. It’s almost as if he’s glad that he’s on the lamb, because now he has the chance to hunt him down and kill him. He sees Manny as an animal, not a person, but as Manny corrects someone else late in the film, he’s not an animal…he’s worse. He’s a human. It’s easy to see the cover of the film and assume it’s an action movie. It’s got all the right elements - a prison break, an unleashed speeding train, a Warden who will stop at nothing until Manny is dead, and a railway crew stumped with how to stop the rig…but this is not an action film. The excitement in Runaway Train comes from within the cabin, as the three people on board try to navigate each other. The real spark here comes from Jon Voight and Eric Roberts. Voight, plays Manny with a cold calculation, everyone a pawn that he would easily discard if necessary. He’s a bully and a pessimist. “Win, lose, what’s the difference?” Roberts, on the other hand, is the excitable young fawn who will do anything to win Manny’s approval. He’s the annoying little brother that always tried to tag along when you were little. Once Sara, an eternal optimist, joins the three, there’s a shift in the dynamic as Buck realizes that Manny might not be the hero he and the other prisoners thought he was while he was locked behind his cell door.
While the film isn’t an action movie, the action scenes are really well done. When someone is trying to traverse the icy engine, there’s a definite sense of speed and danger. The cinematography, shot by Alan Hume, captures both the beautiful and unforgiving side of the Alaskan wilderness, culminating with a shot of one of the characters riding off into the sunset, although not in the way you might think.
Runaway Train is a very good movie; it’s thrilling, but it’s also thought provoking and emotional. I almost had tears in my eyes during one scene in which all three characters kind of just lose hope and death starts to seem like a foregone conclusion. As they huddled in a corner together, both for the comradery and the warmth, I found my body balling up on the couch under my blanket. There’s an amazing score underlining the back half of the film is haunting, and actually sounded kind of like a precursor to Platoon’s score, which would come out a year later. This film also really highlights the talent that Eric Roberts had. He had a hell of a run starting with his Golden Globe nominated performance in Star 80, followed up with The Pope of Greenwich Village, then the Coca-Cola Kid, culminating with a Supporting Actor nom for this role. Runaway Train is a no-brainer recommendation. Janet Maslin from the New York Times agreed, saying “Jon Voight gives a fiery performance”, and Gary Franklin saying, “The most gripping and entertaining film I’ve seen in many months - maybe years.” Make sure not to watch the trailer, which I watched after rewatching the film, and it gives away a whole lot. I watched this on Blu-ray, a disc put out by Kino Lorber. In addition to the trailer, it has other trailers for a few films (like Narrow Margin, another train film, and the film Jon Voight won an Oscar for, Coming Home), as well as a commentary track with Eric Roberts and film historians David Del Valle and C. Courtney Joyner.
