A train that has become unstoppable, a screenplay written by Akira Kurosawa, breathtaking action scenes and two top actors. It’s “Runaway Train”, one of the best action films ever made. Watch on Prime Video.
Manny and Buck manage to escape from their maximum security prison. Their escape is very complicated and dangerous because they are in the middle of Alaska, a region with freezing climatic conditions. However, they reach a station and board a train. Unfortunately for them, the driver suffers a heart attack and the convoy’s brakes no longer respond… The speed keeps increasing and no one seems able to bring it back down…
Absolute joy to see this furious gem from the 80s included in the Amazon Prime Video catalog, which is even, let’s not be afraid of words, quite simply one of the best action films ever made: Runaway Train.
Inspired by a news story for an American film which was to be shot in New York State in the early 1970s, with Henry Fonda and Peter Falk in the main roles, the project was abandoned by Akira Kurosawa, who had writes the script.
About ten years later, the script landed on the desk of Cannon, a famous studio that produces B-series action films, which fans of Chuck “Braddock” Norris know well. Rewritten in part by author Edward Bunker, who knew the prison world well having served several sentences there himself, the film is signed by Andrey Konchalovsky, a Russian filmmaker who came to settle in the United States.
The result is a breathtaking tour de force; a prison film quickly turning behind closed doors at very high speed, inevitably deadly. Filled with sometimes Dantesque sequences shot in landscapes as cold as death, more than once putting your nerves to the test, the film is also carried at arm’s length by a hallucinated and bestial Jon Voigt in the guise of Manny, who finds here one of the best roles of his career. Facing an Eric Roberts in unison, also trying to survive while facing a merciless Jon Voigt.
Runaway Trainto see (and rewatch!) on Prime Video.
