Rent Runaway Train (1985)

A rarity - an intelligent thriller! - Runaway Train review by Mr Aquarium

Compelling, dramatic, tension-laden, a powerful turn from Jon Voight; you might expect a throwaway thriller plot and not much else, but this commands your attention.

Deranged, Derailed, Dostoevsky - Runaway Train review by griggs

Few films career this recklessly between genres and somehow stay on the tracks. The Cannon Films logo raised a wry smile before a single frame had rolled; I had a fair idea what sort of ride I'd booked myself onto. Then comes the curveball: Runaway Train began life from an original Akira Kurosawa screenplay. Somehow, that makes perfect sense.

It's half prison movie, half survival thriller, half Dostoevsky — which is one half too many, and that's precisely where its strange power lives.

Jon Voight tears into Manny like a man auditioning for his own mythology: caged, feral, convinced that escape and self-destruction are the same destination. Eric Roberts matches him in volume, if not always in subtlety — the "I need shoes!" moment is camp gold — and both earning Oscar nominations remains one of cinema's more entertainingly baffling outcomes. Rebecca De Mornay, stranded aboard by plot necessity, has the good sense to stay calm while everyone else loses their mind.

Konchalovsky stages the chaos with real force, but the film's odd rhythm — bursts of brutality, stretches of existential gloom, bizarrely functional control-room logistics — shows the seams whenever it reaches for something deeper.

It ends on Shakespeare. Naturally — this was never a film that knew how to stop.

Seriously good Cannon fare - Runaway Train review by AER

Write this off as a cheapo 80s Cannon special at your peril. This is 80s action cinema done correctly. With fierce performances from the whole cast, there is no restriction on the amount of scenery that gets chewed in this. Excellent work on the eerie unstoppable train as it ploughs through the Alaskan wastes. I don't think Jon Voight or Eric Roberts have ever put in more fierce performances. It's gripping and gosh, that ending. One of my fave 80s films of all time.