Runaway Train is a 1985, Oscar-nominated film which tells the story of two escaped convicts and a female train worker who are stuck on a runaway train as it barrels through snowy desolate Alaska. It stars Jon Voight as Oscar "Manny" Manheim, Eric Roberts as Buck, John P. Ryan as Associate Warden Ranken and Rebecca De Mornay as Sara.
The movie was written by Edward Bunker, Ryuzo Kikushima, Akira Kurosawa, Djordje Milicevic, Hideo Oguni and Paul Zindel. It was directed by Andrei Konchalovsky.
It was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor (Jon Voight), Best Supporting Actor (Eric Roberts) and Editing.
Plot
The film simultaneously follows the escape of two prisoners, the efforts of a train dispatching office to safely stop the out-of-control train they are on, and the hunt by their warden to recapture them.
Jon Voight plays Oscar Manheim (a.k.a. Manny), a convicted bank robber in an Alaska prison who was so good at escaping that the doors to his cell were welded shut. After a court order compels Manny's nemesis, the vindictive Associate Warden Ranken (John P. Ryan), to release him back into the general prison population, he plans his next escape. Buck (Eric Roberts) is another convict who works in the prison's laundry room and conspires to smuggle Manny out. Buck decides to escape with Manny (who reluctantly allows Buck to join him) and the two hop on board a train of four locomotives at a remote Alaska rail yard just as the engineer suffers a heart attack and collapses. Neither the two convicts nor the railway dispatchers are aware that the train is now a runaway. The only railway worker left on the train is Sara (Rebecca De Mornay), a locomotive hostler.
The train barrels through the remote, snowy Alaska wilderness at high speed. Once the dispatchers discover it is a runaway and that they cannot stop it (the automated brakes were burned out since the throttle was jammed at full), they attempt to keep the tracks clear for the runaway and plan to derail it, assuming nobody alive is left on the train. But they soon learn that the train is not unmanned when a railway worker who they have just instructed to switch the train to a dead-end reports that someone on the train (Sara) is blowing the whistle. Warden Ranken concludes that his two escaped convicts are aboard the train after the state police discover prison clothes at the rail yard Manny and Buck departed from. Meanwhile, the two fugitives have found Sara on board and the three attempt to stop the train. At Sara's suggestion, they are able to slow the train by disconnecting the electrical bus link cables of the two rear locomotives, but they cannot halt the train completely (by pressing the emergency fuel cutoff located in the lead engine) because the second locomotive is a streamlined F-unit type, with no forward catwalk and a jammed front door to provide access between the first and second engines.
Eventually, the dispatchers determine that the train is approaching a curve in the track which will derail the train because it is traveling too rapidly. The curve is adjacent to a chemical plant and the dispatchers decide that they must switch the runaway onto a stub-ended siding and crash it there, sending the three people on the train to almost certain death, rather than risk a catastrophic chemical spill and explosion.
Manny shows a violent streak throughout the film and repeatedly asserts his dominance over Buck, while Buck is portrayed more as a victim of circumstances and not very intelligent. Manny is resolved not to return to prison, even if it means his own death. This leads to the film's conclusion when Manny makes a perilous leap to the lead engine, and in a struggle with Warden Ranken (who has successfully boarded the first engine by helicopter), handcuffs him in the cab. Manny then uncouples the first engine from the rest of the train, thereby shutting down the second engine and leaving Buck and Sara safely behind, but he does not stop the lead engine despite Buck's pleas. With Ranken unable to escape, Manny climbs onto the roof of the lone engine in the freezing cold and blowing snow, his arms stretched out like a crucifix, ready to meet his end. The film fades out with the train presumably taking Manny and Ranken to their deaths.
The film closes with an on-screen quote from William Shakespeare's Richard III:-
"No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. But I know none, and therefore am no beast."
Reception
The film received generally positive reviews, and enjoys an 86% "fresh" rating on RottenTomatoes.com as of February 2009.[1] Janet Maslin, writing for the New York Times, felt that much of the film was absurd but that Jon Voigt's performance was excellent, and she credits the film for "crude energy and bravado".[2]
The film's basic premise and its pace partially inspired the screenwriters of the 1994 action film Speed.[citation needed]
Production
Akira Kurosawa originally wrote the original screenplay intending it to be his first color film following Red Beard but difficulties with the American financial backers led to it being shelved. [3]
The Alaska Railroad Corporation (ARRC) decided that their name and logo would not be shown. The filming took place near Portage Glacier, Whittier and Grandview.
The prison scenes at the beginning of the movie were filmed in Deer Lodge, Montana, and some railroad yard scenes were filmed in Anaconda, Montana.
The runaway's locomotive lineup in the movie was Alaska Railroad #3010 (an EMD GP40), #1500 (an EMD F7) and two EMD GP7s, 1801 and 1810. During their Alaska Railroad service the GP7s had had their short hoods chopped but for the film were fitted with mock-up high-noses.
The locomotives used in the film have gone their separate ways:
- ARR GP40 #3010 is still active on the Alaska Railroad, painted in the new corporate scheme.
- ARR F7A #1500 is now at the Alaska Transport Museum in Anchorage, AK.
- ARR GP7u #1810 was sold to the Oregon Pacific railroad and currently operates as OP 1810.
- ARR GP7u #1801 was sold to a locomotive lessor in Kansas City, MO, then sold to the Missouri Central Railroad and operated as MOC 1800. MOC became the Central Midland Railroad in 2002 and the unit was then sold the Respondek Rail Corp of Granite City, IL and is used as a plant switcher for Center Ethenol in Saguet, IL as RRC 1800.
- The Lead locomotive on the train that was hit by the runaway was lead by ALCo/GE MRS1 #1605. This unit had been retired in 1984, two years before filming started. The unit has since been cut up for scrap.
- Sequences set at the rail yard, shot on the Butte, Anaconda and Pacific Railway in Montana, used local locomotives from the BA&P fleet along with former Northern Pacific F9 #7012A rented from the Mount Rainer Scenic Railroad.
- GP7 #1810 subsequently appeared in another motion picture, Under Siege 2 alongside human co-star Steven Seagal.
Richard (Rick) Holley was killed during the filming when the helicopter he was piloting hit power lines on the way to a location shoot in Alaska. The movie is dedicated to him during the opening credits.
The film also has similarities to an earlier Hindi film, The Burning Train (1980).
References
- ^ Rotten Tomatoes page for Runaway Train
- ^ "Film: Runaway Train from Konchalovsky," Janet Maslin, New York Times, December 6, 1985
- ^ Kurosawa, Akira. (2009). Dodes'Ka-den (Akira Kurosawa: It's wonderful to create - Kurosawa Uses Color). [DVD]. The Criterion Collection. http://www.criterion.com/films/1083.
External links
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The films of Andrei Konchalovsky |
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Moscow Chill (2007)}
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The Steamroller and the Violin (1961) (with Andrei Tarkovsky) · Andrei Rublev (1966) (with Andrei Tarkovsky) · Tashkent - gorod khlebny (1968) · Song About Manshuk (1969) · Konets atamana (1970) · Zhdem tebya, paren... (1972) (with Eduard Tropinin) · The Seventh Bullet (1972) (with Fridrikh Gorenshtein) · Nechayannye radosti (1972) (with Fridrikh Gorenshtein and Rustam Khamdamov) · The Fierce One (1974) (with E. Tropinin) · A Slave of Love (1976) (with Fridrikh Gorenshtein) · Trans-Siberian Express (1977) (with Aleksandr Adabashyan and Nikita Mikhalkov) · Krov i pot (1978) (with Rodyon Tyurin)
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