Convicts on the run, a warden out for blood, & a train on the loose!
Several years ago, I was watching Lockup on MSNBC (pure garbage television), and one of the featured inmates was a man who, while being confined to solitary, did everything he could to make life harder for the prison: He’d tear up every mattress he was given (up in the hundreds) and never went quietly when taken out of this cell. If he’d been placed into an ‘80s prison-escape movie, it would surely be Runaway Train.
This man was exercising the only power he had left in the world, a “screw you” to every institution that put him behind bars. Similarly, Jon Voight’s Oscar “Manny” Manheim is in a pure rage against the machine, but instead of some faceless entity like a prison, he has a target for his ire, Warden Ranken (John P. Ryan), who hates Manny back with a vengeance.
When we first see him, Manny is being released from solitary confinement after a court order comes down in his favor. The cell had been welded shut, an extreme measure if there ever was one. His legal victory just rankles Ranken to no end, and he vows payback.
Not one to stand still, Manny makes a break for it shortly after an assassination attempt from one of the Warden’s lackeys. He takes with him young Buck McGeehy (Eric Roberts), a country bumpkin who reveres Manny along with the rest of gen pop.
Bless Roberts for giving it his all. He is an actual Son of the South, but his hyuk-hyuk mannerisms are painful, and the exuberance with which he delivers every line doesn’t help, it hurts.
There’s a strange juxtaposition between cast and location, too. Runaway Train is set in Alaska and was filmed during winter both there and in Montana. In a word, the outdoor visuals are gorgeous. Against this backdrop is a cast the is predominantly from New York, accents and all. It’s jarring, though that was the way of the world in Hollywood all those decades ago.
The action once they reach the eponymous vehicle pushes the movie along, and picking up a third wheel in Sara (Rebecca De Mornay) doesn’t slow things down. She manages to ingratiate herself into the plot in short order, mainly due to De Mornay’s acting chops.
The entire cast is full of scene-chewers, and for a movie about convicts on the run, that’s not the worst thing in the world. Ultimately, Runaway Train teaches us the lesson about Manny and the Warden that The Wire would 20 years later: good guys and bad guys ain’t all that different in the end.
