Runaway Train (1985)

Directed by Andrei Konchalovsky. Starring Jon Voight, Eric Roberts, Rebecca DeMornay, John P. Ryan, Kyle T. Heffner, Kenneth McMillan, T. K. Carter, Edward Bunker, Stacey Pickren. [R]

Philosophical action-drama of two escaped prisoners in the frozen wastes of Alaska hitching a ride on a train that starts racing out of control after the engineer abruptly suffers a heart attack. As the fugitives, Voight and Roberts each chew the frozen scenery with gusto, but they’re effective in giving their symbolic characters shape and depth—the former is intelligent yet cynical and pitiless, the latter is excitable and slow-witted, craving friendship his illusory partner is uninterested in providing. Meanwhile, a boyish, deglamorized DeMornay serves as both a reactionary to the convicts’ combative struggles and a desperate voice of conscience, and Ryan’s warden is the bestial mirror image of Voight on the other side of the law. The character study isn’t quite as revealing as it thinks it is, and the proverbial cap is tipped early on by showing the kinship Voight’s “animal” shares with a fellow prisoner (ex-con Bunker, who also co-scripted), which makes a late change more predictable than it should have been. However, the inhospitable scenery is formidable, the action and stunts are gripping, and real tension is generated at several junctures. The striking final image is undercut by the preceding heavy-handed pan across the faces of prisoners evidently reacting solemnly to events they’re entirely unaware of! Based on a screen story by Akira Kurosawa; the legendary director tried (and failed) to get the project off the ground many years earlier. Danny Trejo and Tommy “Tiny” Lister both make their first onscreen film appearances during the early prison scenes.

73/100