Runaway Tain (1985)

"You're an animal!" "No, worse, I'm a human". "Runaway Train" is one of the great hidden masterpieces of all time. Seldom in the books, this movie by Andrey Konchalovskiy is a fantastic tour de force which plunges deep in human emotions. I had seen it once long ago, and was extremely pleased to see it again yesterday. It is not every movie that can boast the credit "based on a screenplay by Akira Kurosawa". Actually, Kurusawa meant to do the movie but it was cancelled due to bad weather, and so, as he did Ran, Konchalovskiy ended up leading Runaway. This is too bad, because if it was by Kurosawa or Scorcese or other and not by a lesser known russian director it would be hailed as a work of art, which truly is. Set in snowy and freezing Alaska, the movie starts at a maximum security prision, where John Voight, a completely mad and psychotic individual, is released to the normal cell block after three years in solitary. His first thought is to escape and so he does, with a dim-wit young prize fighter played by Eric Roberts. We see their prison escape and soon they end up at a train station. Voight picks a freight train. "Why that train?" asks Roberts. "Because I want to" replies Voight. And so their destiny is sealed. They board. 90 minutes of film still remain. All of a sudden, the movie cuts to the engine room where, almost ridiculously, the driver dies of a heart attack, leaving the train unhanded and gaining speed constantly. Pathos and fate. The are stuck in the train. If they jump they probably die in the fall. If they stay they will die eventually in a crash. There is another person on the train, delicate and life-loving Rebecca de Mornay, the conductor's assistant. So the rest of the movie, more than an hour, the three of them are in the train, trying to get to the front engine to disable it, against the forces of nature and their human resistances. They are chased by the prison warden (John P. Ryan) and guards, at the same time as the train company is trying to divert the train to side tracks so as not to crash against other incoming trains, all the time deciding whether or not to derail it. But these action and tense scenes of whether the train will crash or not, or whether the police can catch them or not, are irrelevant as to what happens between those three characters inside the train. They are aware that the train is in control of their lives. They can either capitulate to it or fight against it, revealing their true nature. Voight is superb, his best performance ever, psychotic but insightful, mesmerizing in every scene. DeMornay, just 2 years after "Risky Business", proved she was not just a pretty face, and her acting is also fabulous. The climax comes when the train company decides to lead it to an unused track so that it can crash, and the warden finally gets to the train by helicopter, and he and Voight have a showdown as the train leads to eminent disaster... Instead of showing what will eventually happen, the movie ends beautifully, with an amazing visual scene, fantastic music, and a quote from Richard III. It is truly fabulous. Pity the rest of the movie was filled with out of context electronic 80s sounds. Only in the end the power of music stood face to face to the power of the images. What started as an 80s action flick ended up in one of the greatest studies of human nature ever made. The movie won none of its 3 oscar nominations (actor for Voight, supporting actor for Roberts and editing), which was a shame, specially Voight's acting. Ok, William Hurt was playing a gay in Spider but anyway, Voight's performance is animal and powerful with a very faint hint of humanity. In the end, the instinct of human beings in extreme situations is revealed to full height, and "Runaway Train", besides its action, besides its great settings and tension, is most of all a character study and of human emotions. Brilliant masterpiece, and a movie that truly deserves to be watched. Konchalovskiy stood the test perfectly as Kurosawa's replacement.