“Boy, I guess you guys picked the wrong train.”

Justin’s rating: Thomas the Tank Engine gone wild!

Justin’s review: I always find it fascinating to rewind the clock to a time before an actor is hopelessly typecast to see them doing something different. I’ve always known Jon Voight as a villain — one whom dives into anacondas head-first — but never really the hero. Or anti-hero. So it’s definitely refreshing to see him as the lead for one of the more underrated action thrillers of the ’80s: Runaway Train.

If that generic title means nothing to you, here are two facts that should make you want to see it. First of all, its story is by the legendary Akira Kurosawa (from the ’60s!). And second, this was a big inspiration behind 1994’s Speed. It also got tons of acclaim and even Academy Award nominations, yet this movie hasn’t seem to emerge from the ’80s as well-known as its peers.

Jon Voight plays Manny, a hardened con whose escape attempts earns him the special ire of the warden in his Alaskan prison. Desperate to get out knowing that his days are most likely numbered, Manny and his lackey Buck (Eric Roberts) make a break for it and end up on a train of only four locomotives whose conductor up and dies… after the train’s already been put into motion and the brakes burned out.

The tension ratchets up as the cons make an uneasy alliance with an assistant conductor named Sara (Rebecca De Mornay) and try to figure out how to stop and/or get off a train that is malfunctioning. Meanwhile, the warden and his goons are eager to use this opportunity to kill Manny once and for all — and they are coming.

With the desperation of the situation crushing this trio from all angles, Runaway Train has all the tools at its disposal to give us a memorable ride. The unstoppable train crashes through everything (and threatens everything) while the stakes keep ratcheting up. We even get to see how the train engineers try to deal with this crisis at their various stations as this unfolds, which gives a bit of a disaster flick feel as well.

If I could have one wish in this film, it’s that Eric Roberts’ Buck would’ve been killed in the first few minutes of the escape. The lunkhead is loud and herky-jerky with his constant movements. He never stops talking, acting like a toddler who’s blasting right through nap time to participate in a train escape. Suffice to say, I found him pretty annoying.

Voight is much better as Manny, a guy that you sincerely believed is a bad, bad person yet is capable of moral thinking, regret, and an overwhelming desire to never go back to captivity. The two of them are rounded out with Sara, who’s relative inexperience in the field of train conducting is nevertheless the best chance any of them have.

Perhaps worse is Rankin, the warden, a grinning sociopath whose only difference from Manny is that he gets paid to kill. His sheer evil presence is enough to make anyone root for the prisoners, if only to spite him from his desired goal.

This is a movie that moves, rarely slowing down to let the audience catch its breath. It’s a masterpiece in its execution, a reminder that we used to have a time that films earned their keep instead of being handed it by a huge budget and CGI. The combination of an unholy amount of steel in motion, the screech of the metal wheels and wind, the pressure cooker of a soundtrack, and the unforgiving Alaskan winter made it awfully hard to tear my eyes away.

But Runaway Train’s real genius is that it also manages to work in a layered human element of two very guilty convicts (a rapist and a killer) and an innocent. Themes of dreams, respect, petty revenge, and — above all — freedom emerge between breaths.

I’m not exaggerating: This film is every ounce as thrilling as Speed (if more bleak and desolate), and I dearly love Speed. I actually held my breath during a few scenes, and came away with a new favorite.

Intermission!

• Ah! Red credits train!
• He’s been welded in his cell for three years?
• Prisons really do love to light paper towels on fire and chuck them everywhere
• Popcorn for prison boxing
• Dang, knife through the hand
• “C’mon, shoot me, I’m goin’ nowhere!”
• Time for a good greasin’!
• The sewer slide into a freezing river is not the ride I’d want to take
• “God, don’t kill them, let me do it.”
• Shut UP about the SHOES
• You idiots, don’t leave your prison uniforms in the trainyard!
• “The brakes on the runaway burned off!”
• LOCOMOTIVE VS CABOOSE
• “Derail that son-of-a-b—!”
• That bridge scene is all about the tension of anticipation
• “You are so brave.” “Yeah, I know it.”
• Gun vs fire extinguisher
• The train growling like a lion