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To me, this movie is perfection.

the audience applauded

It is a performances centric movie

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

There is a gripping story here, about survival, but this movie transcends the simple plot-- three people caught on a runaway train, and being chased by authorities. I maintain, with conviction, that this movie is a powerful work of art, which could have been even greater if it didn't suffer from two of Hollywood's most deep- rooted and crippling problems.First, Hollywood's tendency to throw writers at projects. Five men are credited with the story and the screenplay, which originated with the Japanese genius, Akira Kurosawa. There is much more dialog than is needed, especially the motor-mouth stuff coming out of Roberts. It's painful to imagine how great the script might have been if Kurosawa's original screenplay had been adapted by one good writer, or had been translated and only lightly edited.Second, a lesser problem, the cast, which is merely competent-- not bad, but not great. (NB: I am aware that Voight won the Golden Globe for this performance.) Jon Voight and Eric Roberts started out as pretty boys, and however roughed up they are for this movie, they're still too pretty. The roles-- two escaped convicts-- called for character actors, but character actors can't "open" a movie. So we get workmanlike performances from two adequate actors. That's not fatal, but it is unfortunate because the movie would have benefited so much from really first-rate actors who don't look like they could have been male models-- John Lithgow, for instance, or Robert Duvall or Andre Braugher instead of Voight, and Sean Penn or Gary Farmer instead of Roberts. In this vein, it's interesting to note that the film marks the debut of two character actors who are almost always cast as thugs, Tiny Lister and Danny Trejo...Nevertheless, in spite of those things (which may not bother everyone), RUNAWAY TRAIN is a powerful lament about the nature of free will, and efforts to claim control over your inherent character, which is your destiny. The arch-criminal Voight has some good lines, and one great one: He tells Roberts to get a job if they make it to freedom, become a janitor, anything, but Roberts demands, then why don't you do that? And Voight replies with all the pith the dialog otherwise lacks, "I wish I could."He can't. It's not in his nature to do what he believes people need to do, and should do, to be happy. The plot is all played out in savage settings-- a maximum security prison, a below-zero winter. The world these men occupy is hard and cold in every way. They have to literally crawl through an active sewer to escape, and when they do, the old four- engine train Voight chooses becomes a hell on wheels. The only way to control it is to get to the front engine, the brain of the runaway train, but there is no path to it. And the pursuit of them by authorities continues, led by the warden, a character who is written, unfortunately, with no nuance: he's vengeful, evil, cruel. Early on, he announces to the prisoners that in their world he is 2nd only to God-- but he is actually more like Death. Either way, when he catches up to the train (by helicopter), he descends from the sky. Voight, lying in wait, takes control of him, thereby finally wresting power into his own hands, demanding control of his own destiny. But the only power left to him (and to us all, on our individual runaway trains) is the power to choose Death. He chooses to risk dying if it will bring even a few moments of freedom in our cold, hard world.

Oscar Manheim (Jon Voight) wins a court case and he's released from solitary after 3 years. His cell had been welded shut after previous escapes. The warden is forced to release him into the general population. Buck McGeehy (Eric Roberts) joins him to escape the isolated Alaskan prison in deep winter. They stowaway on a locomotive. The conductor suffers a heart attack and the train becomes an uncontrolled runaway. The danger mounts as locomotive hostler Sara (Rebecca De Mornay) gets to the cab.This is an intense thriller. It starts as a gritty prison movie. It's a tense situation that never ever relaxes. The danger builds and builds. Voight is gruff and Roberts is a weasel. Together they are highly unstable. The whole movie is infused with this instability. The introduction of De Mornay just elevates it to another level. The action looks good and it feels real.

Yeah, it is an action-adventure type film, but it is one of the most powerful ones. It will take you to the depth of human existence, you will ask what is the meaning of all these. What is the difference between the winner and the loser? What is the difference between the cop and the criminal? There is no difference in the wider perspective. The fate is same, they are doomed to the same end after all the fight, no one wins. This ending was the most fitting one. There could not be anything better than this. The realization comes from isolation in the compartment of runaway train. It is an amazing character study. The three human beings are forced to look deep into the abyss of human nature in the most trying situation, being pushed to the brink of life and death.

The next time I criticise an action movie for being brainless, only to be met by the response of "well, it is an action movie!", I'll refer them to Runaway Train, a breathless, thoroughly exciting action movie that manages to portray two fully three-dimensional characters amidst underlying sociological messages about imprisonment and reform. Developed from an un-filmed Akira Kurosawa script by Djordje Milicevic, Paul Zindel, and former hardened inmate Eddie Bunker, Runaway Train proves that action movies can do a hell of a lot more than blow s**t up and offer amusing one-liners.Notorious convict Manny (Jon Voight) is released from three years in confinement by hateful warden Ranken (John P. Ryan) not just because of media pressure, but in the hope that he will try and escape so Barstow may kill him. After he is attacked and wounded, Manny makes the quick decision to escape his Alaskan confines, and does so with the help of the young and rather dumb Buck (Eric Roberts). They board a train, but unbeknown to them the engineer on board has died from a heart attack and the train is heading at high speed towards various obstacles. Ground-staff are alerted to the situation and quickly set about clearing the tracks, but Ranken has soon joined them with revenge in mind.Many Hollywood movies offer moments of spectacular visual effects and sound design that should be applauded, but normally these scenes don't tend to generate any excitement in me. Runaway Train offers similar scenes, but there's two key aspects that make the film work so well. The first is emotional investment. As despicable as these characters often are, Manny and Buck are real, helped considerably by the career-best performances of Voight and Roberts. The former, in an empowering speech that may just be the best work he's ever done, informs Buck of the futility of their situation. They may just rule the world if they could hold down a job, but they can't, they're criminals, and cannot escape their societal role.The appearance of Rebecca De Mornay's character Sara, a young engineer still aboard and who is unable to stop the train, highlights this. Manny and Buck squabble and fight for the first time in front of her, showing that when put into a situation where the laws of society come into play, they reject it and turn into animals. These exchanges occur between some nail-biting scenes, which brings me onto the next aspect that makes the film work so well - real action. There's no wide-shots of gigantic explosions, just two battered men clawing and slipping their way along the snow-drenched train. In one scene, after a daring attempt to jump carriages, Manny's wind and cold-battered face craws towards the camera, ragged bandages hang off his bloodied hand, and his crooked, brown teeth are bared. The camera is so intrusive that you really feel every move he makes, to the point where I felt exhausted.Though it does occasionally slip in prison movie cliché, this is perhaps one of the most underrated films ever made. It was recognised at the Oscars with nominations for Voight, Roberts and for Best Editing, but it doesn't seem to have left the legacy it certainly deserves. I wouldn't exactly call the film obscure, but your average film-goer probably won't have heard of it, especially when compared to, say, Die Hard (1988). This is riveting stuff, tightly directed by Russian Andrei Konchalovsky (who went on to make the crappy Tango & Cash (1989)), and the film leaves you with an beautiful and slightly eerie final image that could say more than words could have.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com