Runaway Train

Cannon Films may have been celebrated as a factory churning out trashy dreams, but in its time, it heralded some of the trends that would turn up in Hollywood in the new millennium. We can describe one of its most critically successful titles as a forerunner of the trend involving the hiring of filmmakers with a distinctive creative signature and character actors for big-budget action projects. Soviet national artist and prominent filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky longed to work in Hollywood and his dream was fulfilled by the head of Cannon Films, Menahem Golan. In return for that, Konchalovsky was the only one of a number of filmmaking greats for whom Cannon financed original projects to work repeatedly for the company – in total, he made four movies for Cannon. Runaway Train adheres to the format of a standard blockbuster with the three-level “the book, the hook, the look” concept. For viewers, the hook was the involvement of a renowned director and a magnificent cast led by Jon Voight and the talented young actors Eric Roberts and Rebecca De Mornay. The film’s distinctive look was provided by the setting of the story in a frozen Alaskan wasteland and the tense reportage shooting style. The film’s source work was Akira Kurosawa’s acclaimed screenplay based on an actual event that took place in 1962, when four coupled locomotives went out of control and dashed along the tracks of New York State. In collaboration with screenwriter Paul Zindel, Konchalovsky transformed Kurosawa’s script for a straightforward thriller into a thrilling parable about freedom, brutality and humanity. It was also Konchalovsky who decided to move the action to Alaska and to give priority to the characters of escaped criminals by adding prison scenes, which were polished for the screen by Edward Bunker, a writer with first-hand experience with maximum security prisons. To this day, Runaway Train has lost none of its impressiveness, breadth of meaning or its fierce pacing and suspense. Furthermore, it is fascinating as a rare ideal combination of absorbing spectacle with a superstructure comprising a creative approach that manages to distil its potential, which goes far beyond traditional genre categories. (03/09/2015)

An excellent thriller with a great atmosphere of despair. Simple but fundamentally a story of genius: A runaway train with two escaped convicts, with no chance of stopping in the wilderness of Alaska. Lunatic Manny is one of the best roles Jon Voight ever played and Eric Roberts gives the performance of his life (nomination for an Oscar). And the ending... (11/11/2006)

A riveting thrill ride that benefits from two things in particular: 1) Konchalovsky’s conception of the limited space of the train, where the tension is heightened by the cuts to the control center, which creates more obstacles and problems, 2) the excellently written and acted characters of the prisoners and guards, for whom it is quite an issue to feel any sympathy, given their nature. The result is an uncompromising flick whose appeal, even after more than twenty years, is mainly due to the irresistible boyish feeling of hard adventure, as is the case for the films made by Frankenheimer or Carpenter. In fact, the traditional synth music references the latter. A classic. (04/09/2009)

When the song Runaway Train by Soul Asylum was playing on the radio a few days ago, I thought I might as well rewatch the adventure movie of the same name. This is a movie in which you will essentially feel all the frostbite and fingers crushed by iron, which transforms the usual premise of a prison escape into an original "survival movie"; with a runaway armoured train and a very memorable manic performance by Jon Voight in the lead role and great Eric Roberts and Rebecca De Mornay in supporting roles. With the unconventional direction of Andrey Konchalovskiy and the original screenplay by Akira Kurosawa, this Cannon Films production feels like revelation. This is a stylish and chilling action movie that really gets under your skin. (03/02/2020)

Sure, the story and a bit of the execution is B-grade, but the acting, the dynamic editing, and last but not least the unstoppable runaway train give it a very convincing mask of refined action spectacle. Konchalovsky didn't sweat much on the director's chair, but the film is all the more brisk and emotionally striking in the end. If you fancy switching off for 100 minutes and a splash of blood here and there won't upset you, don’t hesitate. 75% (03/03/2013)