Movie Details
| Title: | Runaway Train | |
| Director: | Andrei Konchalovsky | |
| Year: | 1985 | |
| Genre: | Disaster | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 12.23.25 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 12.23.25 | Internet | I've never seen this movie. I saw the VHS box countless times at the video store and for some reason always confuse this with Midnight Express ("Oh Billy!") but it just fell through the cracks for me. I have to say... it's a good movie! I really liked it. It totally surprised me. For some reason I thought it was like a trash movie or something but it's really good. John Voight's good, Eric Roberts is good, the cinematography is excellent. I read in the imdb trivia that they mostly shot on stages in LA with just a few weeks of second unit in Montana and Alaska and I'm blown away. The whole movie looks harsh and cold and dirty and uncomfortable. The train looks fast and brutal and legitimately formidable. It's also a prison movie which I didn't know. It's really split down the middle between prison and action/disaster but the train relay office guys are 100% in a disaster movie. Eric Roberts does say "Manny" a lot, and his accent is a lot, but I buy his performance as well as Voight with his weird accent. The score also lends the movie a grandiose epic feel which perfectly suits the ending which otherwise might come off as a bit rough or unfinished. I just can't get over the snow in much of the train photography. When I was watching Running Man, I realized that no matter how slick and developed the story and photography and production and editing, so much about movies today still relies on CGI that I am divorced from all the action. Glen Powell probably did hang off something holding onto a rope during production, albeit it was probably on some green screen stage and digitally composited onto the top of a building. Whoever Eric Roberts' stunt double sure as shit looked like he was stepping out onto a snowy moving train with no wires or harnesses and just him reaching for a handle and hanging off a ladder rung was more thrilling to me than anything they can make today. Even if it's the selling point of the movie like Tom Cruise jumping off a cliff on a motorcycle, there's digital harness removal and compositing the ramp away and in the film it just doesn't look real. Even when it looks real enough, everyone knows the state of visual effects so you never really feel it in a visceral way like that guy standing on the side of the moving train. It's a real shame in that way, but it definitely makes these early 90s and 80s and 70s movies hit that much harder. So glad I finally watched this. Crazy that this was a Canon film. It's like the one real movie they made. I should probably see that Tony Scott train movie now. It might not be as bad as I assumed. |
