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Runaway Train
Release Date: 1986
Ebert Rating: ****
By Roger Ebert Jan 17, 1986
The great adventure movies
have all been stories of character, not just tales of action. One of the
great losses in the movies of recent years has been that sense of real
character. One-dimensional people insert themselves into chases and
explosions, and the mindless spectacle on the screen is supposed to replace
the presence of plausible human beings.
"Runaway Train" is a reminder that the great adventures are great
because they happen to people we care about. That was true of "The
African Queen," and of "Stagecoach," and of "The Seven
Samurai," three movies that would otherwise seem to have little in
common. And it is also true of this tale of two desperate convicts on a train
that is hurtling through the snows of Alaska.
The movie stars Jon Voight and Eric Roberts, two actors with dramatically
different styles. Voight is always internalized and moody; Roberts has a
collection of verbal and physical tics that are usually irritating, and are
sometimes meant to be. Here they are both correctly cast as two convicts in a
maximum-security prison in Alaska who escape through a drain
tunnel and then blunder onto the train that takes them on their hell-bound
mission.
Voight plays Manny, a convict who is so distrusted by the warden that his
cell doors have been welded shut for three years. "He's not a human
being - he's an animal," the warden says, and this is not just stock
dialogue, but the thesis that the whole movie will test. Roberts is Buck, a
trustie who works for the prison laundry. The warden is Barstow (Kyle T. Heffner), and he
has a personal grudge against Manny.
In fact, he releases him from solitary in the wicked hope that Manny will try
to escape - he's done it before - and then Barstow can kill him.
The opening passages are intense, but somewhat routine; they're out of the
basic kit of prison movie cliches. Then the two convicts escape, and stumble
by luck into one of the back cabs of a train that consists of four
locomotives linked together. The train starts, the engineer suddenly
collapses with a heart attack, and the epic journey has begun.
"Runaway Train" is based on an original screenplay by the Japanese
master Akira Kurosawa, whose best movies use action as a means of studying
character. (His recently released "Ran" retells "King
Lear" in a samurai setting.) After some rewriting, "Runaway Train"
was directed by Andrei Konchalovsky, the Russian emigre who figures so
memorably (under a pseudonym) as Shirley MacLaine's lover in her current best
seller Dancing in the Light. He has given the story the kind of wildness and
passion it requires; this isn't a high-tech Hollywood adventure movie, but a raw
saga that works close to the floor.
Once the train has started to move, the movie follows three threads. One
involves the three people on the train (the two men discover after a while
that a woman crew member, played by Rebecca DeMornay, is also on board and
also powerless to stop the engines). The second thread involves the railway
dispatchers, who quarrel over a computer system that may possibly have the
ability to clear the tracks ahead of the runaway. The third involves the ferocious
determination of Barstow, the warden, to track the
train by helicopter, and to kill the men inside.
These elements might be enough to make "Runaway Train" a superior
action movie. What makes it more than that are the dynamics inside the cab of
the train. Voight is seen as a man who is intelligent enough to realize how
desperate his situation is - because he has been caught not just in a
physical trap, but also in a philosophical one. In an impassioned speech that
may be the best single scene he has ever played, he tries to explain to
Roberts how limited their choices are in life.
The Roberts character does not quite understand the story. He is a wild man
of limited intelligence, and prison life has made him dangerous - he acts
without regard for the consequences. When these two men are joined by a
woman, it's not just a plot gimmick; her role as an outsider gives them an
audience and a mirror.
The action sequences in the movie are stunning. Frequently in recent movies,
I've seen truly spectacular stunts and not been much excited, because I knew
they were stunts. All I could appreciate was their smoothness of execution.
In "Runaway Train," as the characters try to climb along the sides
of the ice-covered locomotives, as the train crashes through barriers and
other trains, as men dangle from helicopters and try to kill the convicts,
there is such a raw, uncluttered desperation in the feats that they put slick
Hollywood stunts to shame.
The ending of the movie is astonishing in its emotional impact. I will not
describe it. All I will say is that Konchalovsky has found the perfect visual
image to express the ideas in his film. Instead of a speech, we get a
picture, and the picture says everything that needs to be said. Afterward,
just as the screen goes dark, there are a couple of lines from Shakespeare
that may resonate more deeply the more you think about the Voight character.
Cast & Credits
Manny: Jon Voight
Buck: Eric Roberts
Sara: Rebecca Demornay
Frank Barstow: Kyle T. Heffner
Ranken: John P. Ryan
Eddie: Kenneth McMillan
Cannon Presents A Film Directed By Andrei Konchalovsky And Produced By
Menahem Golan And Yoram Globus. Screenplay By Djordje Milicevic, Paul Zindel
And Edward Bunker, Based On A Screenplay By Akira Kurosawa. Photographed By
Alan Hume. Music By Trevor Jones. Running Time: 111 Minutes. Classified R.
© 2005
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October 2007
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