Weekly Film Rec: Runaway Train

I've been thinking about films that take place on trains a lot lately. Maybe it's because I just watched Strangers on a Train again. The realization just hit me that, by and large, I love movies that take place on trains. The General, Silver Streak, The Lady Vanishes (Hitchcock really loved trains), The Taking of Pelham 123 (the original), Murder on the Orient Express, The Darjeeling Limited. Perhaps it's a deep-seated yearn to have a train set. Regardless, these films can be like rolling chamber pieces (limited sets/characters) or be travelogues.

Upon one of my ruminations about train films, a coworker suggested Runaway Train (not to be confused with the song, which greatly differs in subject matter). Jon Voight plays Manny (using the voice Michael Scott used for "Prison Mike" in The Office) and Eric Roberts plays Buck (doing his best Lenny from Of Mice and Men). They just escaped from an Alaskan prison and hopped a train heading... somewhere, but the conductor has a heart attack and various train malfunctions result in a, you guessed it, Runaway Train! Oh, and somewhere along the way, Rebecca De Mornay pops up.


The great thing about Runaway Train is that you not only get a film about a runaway train, but it starts out with a prison break! How many movies have you seen that have some huge event like a heist happen before the movie starts and the characters just talk about it? Prison Mike apparently made it a hobby breaking out of this prison, so it comes pretty easily to him, but Lenny just had to tag along, who is really pushing the limits on how much irritation one can take and is probably the least enjoyable part of the film.

Aside from the train, you've got the control booth where they are trying to figure out how to stop the train. The best part of these scenes is seeing Nauls from The Thing (T.K. Carter) pop up dressed very much like he would fit into the Portland scene today. Also, the head of prison security is trying to track down Prison Mike as they have a long standing feud.

I have to give the film a lot of credit. Once you establish that a train is careening down the tracks, it seems pretty limited as to what all of the option to stop it will be, but Runaway Train defied a lot of my expectations. Sometimes the results of this defiance weren't as spectacular as I imagined they'd be, but it's nice to be kept guessing.

Probably the most interesting tidbit about the film is that it's based on a screenplay by Akira Kurasawa and was apparently going to start Henry Fonda and Peter Falk. Now that I have that knowledge, I can't help but feel sad and a little bit empty inside that that film doesn't exist.