Runtime: 111 minutes
Directed by: Andrey Konchalovskiy
Starring: Jon Voight, Eric Roberts, Rebecca De Mornay, John P. Ryan, Kyle T. Haffner
From: Cannon
I was happy to watch a great movie (which should have been watched many years ago) last night right after I discovered there are now 3,000 accounts that follow me on Letterboxd. I’ll never not be amazed at the amount of followers I have on this crazy site. This was selected mainly due to its leaving Prime at the end of the year and the rather bizarre pedigree it has. To echo others, this is a gritty macho 80’s action-thriller which managed to get two Oscar nods for its leads, was directed by a Russian who worked with Tarkovsky, was based on a screenplay by Kurosawa which was then modified in part by Mr. Blue from Reservoir Dogs (Eddie Bunker himself was a criminal in a past life) and was released by Cannon. I can’t definitely say this was the best Golan-Globus production as after all they released a Cassavetes film I haven’t viewed yet, but at least it’s one of their best.
In short, Jon Voight is a hardened criminal (how on Earth did he get so jaded?) who escapes from a brutal Alaskan prison run by a dictator of a warden; fellow prisoner Eric Roberts tags along, much to Voight’s consternation. They end up on the titular train which had the misfortune of having its conductor passing away via heart attack. Meanwhile, the warden attempts to track them down, the railroad engineers attempt to prevent disaster & also a surprise I dare not spoil. Figuratively, the train is going the wrong way down a one-way track…
What a film this is; even before they hop on a train, we see that “Daniel Trejo” is a fellow prisoner and “Tom ‘Tiny’ Lister” works at the prison. Once on the choo-choo, the viewer discovers this highly masculine film (which yeah, does have some attitudes representative of the time) is smarter than it first appears… there are extensional, philosophical moments as those animalistic prisoners experience some growth as they eventually realize their fate seems to be doomed due to the circumstances—along with how, among other things, Cannon’s stock villain John P. Ryan was so deliciously evil, he was no better than the prisoners he’s in charge of.
Voight, Roberts, Ryan, and Rebecca De Mornay all shine in their roles. People’s opinions of Voight have dimmed in recent years, but mainly due to off the screen controversies. In terms of on-screen, he can deliver great performances. I thought this even before seeing the same comment in other reviews, but both Voight and Roberts sport wacky accents, w/ the latter sounding just like and even resembling at times… Matthew McConaughey! There was some exciting action to go along with the thrills and the thought-provoking drama among the flawed characters (your opinion of Roberts’ character will change once you hear what he was once charged with) in a wonderous snowy landscape. Those that have read me long enough should realize that a Trevor Jones score which was 80’s-riffic and sounded like mimicry of Tangerine Dream at times would be glorious in my eyes—my jam.
It's a movie that could have… derailed with the blending of all those different elements. Much to my relief, the final act sealed the deal and resulted in such a high rating… one higher than expected going in. I’ll just always ponder what a Kurosawa movie in the late 60’s made in America based on his original script would have been like; it almost happened.
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