Runaway Train is an action thriller film from the year 1985 by
Andrei Konchalovsky.
Based on a screenplay by
Akira Kurosawa, the film tells a tale of two convicts, Manny (Jon Voight) and Buck (Eric Roberts) who escape from an Alaskan prison and end up on
a runaway train with no brakes on it. While the train races across the snow-covered landscape, they come across the remaining train employee Sara (Rebecca De Mornay) who warns them that the track they're on leads to certain doom, so the three of them work to either stop or slow the train. Complicating things are the railroad company looking to derail the train before it causes any casualties along the line, and ruthless prison warden Rankin with a grudge against Manny who quickly figures the two convicts are aboard the train...
This film has the examples of:
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Buck and Manny escape from prison through one.
- Berserk Button: Relying on dreams and such seems to be one for Manny.
- Bolivian Army Ending: The audience doesn't see Manny and Warden Rankin dying on the final engine, which races into the snow-covered horizon as images of sullen-faced prisoners — except for Manny's friend, who smiles — cross the fading screen.
- Captivity Harmonica
- Chewing the Scenery: Manny in a scenery-chewing speech telling Buck about the futility of dreams and how men like them will end up in nowhere jobs suffering indignities.
Manny: I'll tell you what you gonna do. You gonna get a job. That's what you gonna do. You're gonna get a little job. Some job a convict can get, like scraping off trays in a cafeteria. Or cleaning out toilets. And you're gonna hold onto that job like gold. Because it is gold. Let me tell you, Jack, that is gold. You listenin' to me? And when that Man walks in at the end of the day. And he comes to see how you done, you ain't gonna look in his eyes. You gonna look at the floor. Because you don't want to see that fear in his eyes when you jump up and grab his face, and slam him to the floor, and make him scream and cry for his life. So you look right at the floor, Jack. Pay attention to what I'm sayin', motherfucker!
- Determinator: Manny
- The train itself refuses to be slowed by any means, slamming through obstacles as though possessed.
- Fan Boy: Buck worships the ground Manny walks on. Gets a little disillusioned when Manny's viciousness becomes apparent as they work on stopping the train.
- Filth: Porn mags provide distractions on two points.
- Flipping the Bird
- Great Escape
- Heroic Sacrifice: Manny makes the jump onto the main train engine, at the cost of half his hand. He defeats Rankin and traps him on the engine, and then goes back out and decouples the engine from the rest of the train, sparing Buck and Sara's lives before climbing onto the engine's roof and finish the ride somewhere off the horizon. It's left to the viewer to determine if Manny was doing it to spare Buck and Sara or defy the warden's expectations.
- Hollywood Heart Attack
- Humans Are Bastards: Manny sees things this way, as evident from this exchange:
Sara: You're an animal!
Manny: No, worse! Human. Human!
- Improvised Weapon: Manny beats up Rankin with a fire extinguisher.
- Just Train Wrong
- Meaningful Name: Manny.
- Mêlée à Trois: Manny, Buck and Sara tend to be at each other throats with the balance of power shifting between the three. This is even while they're working together to stop the train.
- Prisons Are Gymnasiums
- Rated M for Manly
- Runaway Train: Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
- Scenery Porn
- Soundtrack Dissonance
- Taking You with Me
- Tattooed Crook: Buck.
- Title Drop
- Vertigo Effect
- Villain Protagonist
- Window Pain
- Worthy Opponent: Manny and Rankin. Also covers The Only One Allowed to Defeat You.
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