Summary

Runaway Train is a gritty and remorseless film, with a simple but effective plot and great use of setting to create tension. Despite being a rushed and oddball production, the film managed to beat the odds and impress critics, becoming a cult classic. The involvement of former inmates, including character actor Danny Trejo, added an air of authenticity to the film and helped launch their Hollywood careers.

If all you heard was the title, Runaway Train, you could be forgiven for having low expectations. Two escaped convicts hijack a train heading nowhere, cursed by an electronic system designed not to fail, pursued by an insane warden out to bring the two escapees to justice. It’s a stupidly simple elevator pitch, with all the necessary contrivances needed to keep the plot on course, but one that demanded the actors to make the most of the material. Our three protagonists trapped in a cramped engine car, it is essentially a chamber play disguised as an action movie. These smug career criminals deep down knowing their pride and instincts have ruined their lives.

All of this punctuated by the Alaska wasteland, the stark white scorching your eyeballs. Using the setting to great effect, even Mother Nature is out to kill everyone. The disgusting, claustrophobic, cruel prison inviting in comparison to the “freedom” outside in the frozen tundra. The convicts are truly at home only among other scumbags in prison, where they can indulge their worst tendencies.

This is precisely the type of rushed, oddball film you’ll never see a rational studio attempt. With actors nobody wanted, an unfilmable script, a prickly director that couldn’t get a job, assisted by an ex-bank robber with a drug habit tweaking the script, and made by a studio that exclusively made B-movie schlock, this train wreck of a production managed to beat the odds.

Lost in Translation
Toho

Starting life across the globe, Akira Kurosawa wrote the original script that would eventually become Runaway Train, hoping to film it himself. It was shelved for decades, as neither he nor anyone else could overcome the language or culture gap needed to film it in the United States. In development hell it languished, until coming to the attention of Andrei Konchalovsky, a Soviet refugee. Fleeing Russia, he discovered no one who wanted him in the West despite his lauded past work… except The Cannon Group, one of the least-respected production studios in Hollywood. He didn’t have a choice.

Cannon’s bad rep might explain why Robert Duvall and Sylvester Stallone both turned down the project. The Russian director, however, lucked out, contacting his old friend Jon Voight. Co-starring a sexy young actress (Rebecca De Mornay) covered in soot and five layers of fleece, and a mentor figure who comes across as a sociopath (Voight), the audience is asked to identify with a dimwitted convict (Eric Roberts).

Runaway Train is gritty and remorseless, the train in question barreling headlong into a dead-end that will surely kill all trapped aboard. For once, the lack of a budget didn’t harm a film, but made it better. Roberts is perfectly cast as the vulnerable, insecure creep named Buck. It’s arguably the best role of his career, as also applies to Voight (under some heavy make-up), who expertly plays the pivotal central character, Manny, methodically choosing when to subtly emote and when to chew the scenery.

If there’s any fault with the film, it lies with De Mornay’s character. Given short shrift among three other subplots competing for screen-time, she is sadly wasted, the assistant engineer Sara relegated as a background character. The character was originally a male engineer, the gender swap made by Konchalovsky to add a tinge of femininity to a film bursting with machismo. But it’s clear she’s only there to deliver exposition and amplify the tension between the Manny and Buck characters.

Related: Here Are Some of the Greatest Prison Escapes in Movie History

The Folsom Prison Connection
Sony Pictures Releasing

Runaway Train marked the birth of the career of character actor Danny Trejo, of Machete and Heat fame. The film’s consultant, Eddie Bunker, was a convicted felon with a rap sheet a mile long. He had made a name for himself as the youngest inmate ever at San Quentin, later running a drug-dealing ring and robbing a bank. Of more importance, he also once busted out of the joint, before abstaining from crime and becoming a novelist and screenwriter.

Trejo, too, was a convict trying to right his life. The two career-criminals first crossed paths at Folsom Prison in California. In an earlier stint in San Quentin, he participated in a prison riot in 1969. For his role in that incident, Trejo was once placed in solitary confinement for months. If there was anyone who could help with creating an air of authenticity, it was these two fellas.

Bunker was battling a serious methadone addiction at the time he was hired as a script doctor, barely able to keep it together (per NPR). By a fluke, Trejo, now a drug counselor, bumped into his old friend on set, Bunker. Trejo, ironically, was there to chase away drug dealers on set. It was the ’80s, and this was Hollywood. Suffice to say that the snow wasn’t the only white powder burying the set. Trejo was written into the movie, Bunker assigned the job of picking a fighter to square off against Roberts in an early scene in a prison boxing match. Well versed in throwing hands, Trejo was initially signed on only to train Roberts. Both Trejo and Bunker would parlay their tiny roles into Hollywood stardom off the back of this single film, Konchalovsky putting his faith in a couple of former inmates. Or, could be, he was just that desperate.

Related: Danny Trejo Says Filming Con Air Turned Into One Long ‘Macho’ Contest

“The Spanner in the Works”
Golan-Globus Productions

This story doesn’t really have a happy ending. Though it was loved by most critics, and has gone down as a rare cult classic that is legitimately excellent, the thing lost money. Maybe that’s for the better; we were spared a terrible sequel knowing Cannon’s bosses, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. Had Konchalovsky’s thriller made a killing at the box office, it definitely would have got a cheesy second installment.

Instead, we got a perfect single outing — one of the weirdest anomalies in movie history, a failed blockbuster that wound up impressing the art-house crowd by freak accident. If any other studio but Cannon was in charge, this thing never would have stood a chance. With the sheer amount of narcotics, dangerous heavy equipment, and ex-felons charged with keeping the peace, it’s hard to imagine how (or if) this film obtained insurance coverage.

Lightning wouldn’t strike twice. Konchalovsky departed the United States after a bad experience making Tango and Cash, telling reporters years later of his lack of respect for the Western film industry, “You are needed there only as a craftsman, but if suddenly you show ambition a bit above the average level — that’s it, they start putting a spanner in the works.” Maybe he missed the snow and cheap vodka.

Among Cannon’s fanboys are Quentin Tarantino and collaborator Roger Avary, who fondly recalled Golan and Globus as pioneers rather than hucksters: “What me and Roger saw were two guys trying to take on the industry, trying to take on Hollywood and make the movies they wanted to make.” Tarantino wasn’t far off, Runaway Train was the surprise critical hit of the year, basking in the award-show season glory even if it didn’t make back its middling budget. Back in 1985, inviting The Cannon Group to an award ceremony was like giving three Michelin stars to a Taco Bell. It’s the type of doomed passion project we need more of.