Runaway Train

A film set on a runaway train in Alaska. Manny is a prisoner in a maximum security jail who has escaped twice. The warden kept him in solitary for years and there is something personal between them. Manny breaks out again with a young inmate. After walking through the snow the two jump a train. On the way the engineer has a heart attack and falls off. The train, four locomotives with no brakes, starts accelerating. What the film is interested in is not the escape but what freedom is. Manny does not know what to do outside; he does not fit the system and cannot live without one either. The argument built around the character is the film's strongest element. The screenplay comes from a text Akira Kurosawa wrote years earlier and never filmed. Jon Voight plays Manny and Eric Roberts the young prisoner; both were Oscar-nominated. Rebecca De Mornay is in the cast. Andrey Konchalovsky directed. It was shot in real snow with real trains; there are no computer effects in the action. Among the best of its genre for anyone who likes action films and thrillers built on character. For a viewer expecting an easy ending, the film softens nothing.