Runaway Train (film)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Runaway Train is a 1985 film which tells the story of two escaped convicts and a female train worker who are stuck on a runaway train as it barrels through snowy desolate Alaska. The movie has a gritty, uninviting atmosphere. It stars Jon Voight as Oscar "Manny" Manheim, Eric Roberts as Buck, John P. Ryan as Associate Warden Ranken and Rebecca De Mornay as Sara.
The movie was written by Edward Bunker, Ryuzo Kikushima, Akira Kurosawa, Djordje Milicevic, Hideo Oguni and Paul Zindel. It was directed by Andrei Konchalovsky.
It was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor (Jon Voight), Best Supporting Actor (Eric Roberts) and Editing.
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[edit] The making of
The Alaska Railroad Corporation (ARRC) decided that their name and logo could not be shown. The filming took place near Portage Glacier, Whittier and Grandview.
The prison scenes at the beginning of the movie were filmed in Deer Lodge, Montana, and some railroad yard scenes were filmed in Anaconda, Montana.
[edit] Plot
The film follows the escape of two prisoners, the efforts of a train dispatching office to safely stop the out of control train they are on and the efforts of their warden to capture them.
Jon Voight plays Oscar Manheim, aka Manny, a convict in an Alaska prison who was considered so dangerous that the doors to his cell were welded shut. After a court order compels Manny's nemesis, the vindictive Associate Warden Ranken (played by John P. Ryan), to release him back into the general prison population, he plans his escape. Buck (played by Eric Roberts) is another convict who works in the prison's laundry room and conspires to smuggle Manny out. Buck decides to escape with Manny (who reluctantly allows Buck to join him) and the two hop on board a freight train at a remote Alaska railyard just as the engineer suffers a heart attack and collapses. Neither the two convicts nor the railroad dispatchers are aware that the train is now a runaway. The only railroad worker left on the train is Sara, played by Rebecca De Mornay.
The train barrels through the remote, snowy Alaska wilderness at high speed. Once the dispatchers discover it is a runaway and that they cannot stop it as the automated brakes are not working, they attempt to keep the tracks clear for the runaway and plan on derailing it, assuming nobody is left on the train. The dispatchers soon learn that the train is not unmanned when a railroad worker who they have just instructed to switch the train to a dead-end reports that someone on the train (Sara) is blowing the whistle. Warden Ranken believes his two escaped convicts are aboard the train after the state police discover prison clothes at the railyard Manny and Buck departed from. Meanwhile, the two fugitives have discovered that Sara is also on board and the three attempt to stop the train. They slow the train by disabling two of the four locomotives, but they can not stop the train without reaching the front engine which they can not reach because there is no walkway connecting the first and second engines.
Eventually the dispatchers discover that the train is approaching a curve in the track which would derail the train because it is travelling too rapidly. The curve is adjacent to a chemical plant and the dispatchers decide they must switch the runaway onto a dead-end siding and send the three people on the train to almost certain death rather than risk a catastrophic chemical spill.
Manny shows a violent streak throughout the film and repeatedly asserts his dominance over Buck, while Buck is portrayed more as a victim of circumstances and not very intelligent. Manny is resolved not to return to prison, even if it means his own death; this leads to the film's conclusion as Manny makes a perilous leap to the lead engine, handcuffs Warden Ranken (who successfully boards the first train engine by helicopter), disconnects the first train engine from the rest of the units (with Buck and Sara on board), and doesn't shut off the train; which takes Manny and Ranken down a dead-end siding, presumably to crash to their death.
[edit] Theme
The primary theme of the film is that no individual or society can understand and control everything. The powerlessness that the train dispatchers experience in their attempts to bring the train to a controlled stop is the same powerlessness that Manny feels about his own inability to become a normal member of society.
This theme is brought into sharp focus in an intense speech in which Manny tells Buck that he should get a job and earn a paycheck after his escape instead of pursuing a life of crime. Buck replies that he would rather be in prison than do menial labor, and when he asks Manny if he would do that kind of work for a living, Manny replies quietly, "I wish I could."
Later in the film, after giving the order to derail the train, the chief dispatcher asks himself, "How did this happen? Why couldn't we stop it...?" As the events of the film unfold, Manny has the power to stop the train, but chooses not to. By the end of the film his goal in reaching the lead engine is no longer to stop the train, but simply to be the one who decides whether or not the train stops. Since he knows that if he stops the train he will never be able to control his own life, he concludes that the last choice he can make about his own fate and the only way he can be free is to let the train continue on to its destruction.
The film also features lesser thematic threads, including cruelty (Ranken), innocence (Sara) and most notably redemption, as shown when Manny uncouples the lead engine from the rest of the train, saving the lives of Buck and Sara as his final act before climbing on top of the engine in the freezing cold with his arms stretched out like a crucifix, ready to meet his end.
[edit] External link
- Runaway Train at the Internet Movie Database
- Film info and some stills
- Runaway Train at Project 80's Movies
