Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky's second American film may well be the only existential adventure flick in Hollywood history. Two prisoners, Manny (Jon Voight) and Buck (Eric Roberts), escape from a desolate Alaskan maximum-security facility. They hop aboard a speeding train, making a clean escape. But the engineer has suffered a heart attack, and the train goes out of control. To prevent a disastrous head-on collision, the railroad heads decide to derail the runaway train, killing its occupants to save the lives of hundreds of others. Once Manny catches on to what's happening, he tries to jump off the train, only to be talked out of such a foolhardy act by railroad employee Sara (Rebecca DeMornay). As doom approaches, Manny apparently goes mad, viciously preventing any attempts to stop the train or rescue its passengers: if he's to die, and if the others are to be saved, it will be on his terms, or no terms. Runaway Train was slated as a project for Akira Kurosawa in 1970, but for various creative and scheduling reasons, it remained on the back burner for 15 years.


Runaway Train is a 1985 American action-thriller film, directed by Andrei Konchalovsky. The screenplay by Djordje Milicevic, Paul Zindel and Edward Bunker was based on an original screenplay by Akira Kurosawa with uncredited contributions by frequent Kurosawa collaborators Hideo Oguni and Ryuzo Kikushima. It stars Jon Voight, Eric Roberts, Rebecca De Mornay and John P. Ryan. It was also the feature debuts of Danny Trejo and Tommy "Tiny" Lister, who both proceeded to successful careers as "tough guy" character actors.
The film's story concerns two escaped convicts and a female railroad worker who are stuck on a runaway train as it barrels through snowy desolate Alaska. Voight and Roberts were both nominated for Academy Awards for their respective roles.


The film received generally positive reviews, and enjoyed an 86% "fresh" rating on RottenTomatoes.com as of February 2009.[4] Janet Maslin, writing for the New York Times, felt that much of the film was absurd but that Jon Voight's performance was excellent, and she credits the film for "crude energy and bravado".[5] In 2010, movie critic Michael Phillips said on his show At the Movies that it was the most under-rated movie of the 1980s. Roger Ebert awarded the film four out of four stars.

Release Date: December 6, 1985


Distrib: Cannon Films


Boxoffice: $7,683,620 2014: $17,293,300