I saw this in 1985 and my memory of it was slim other than remembering being very surprised at the time by the Oscar nominations for the two lead scenery chewing actors. I'm still surprised though Voight's better than I had remembered as a mighty vicious criminal who has pretty much realized that he has lost all chance of having any kind of shot at having anything resembling a normal life though deep down, very deep, there is a slim glimpse of some humanity left in him. His sole goal as we see him is to do anything at all to stay out of prison from which he has escaped in the early part of this film. Not that he wants it, tagging along with him is a beyond dumb young fighter portrayed by Eric Roberts. The prison escape takes place in the Alaskan wilderness and is well done though one has to swallow the near cartoon like villain of a warden played by John P. Ryan who does all but twirl the ends of his moustache. These two escaped cons manage to get on a train and have some preposterous timing as the conductor immediately drops dead from an apparent heart attack leaving these two alone on a runaway train. The rest is all on this train with many attempts by the controllers to either stop it or keep it from causing even more damage with a crash. It holds up better than a lot of 80's action movies and it's pretty tense and action packed with a lot of moralizing speeches as we speed along. Rebecca DeMornay shows up eventually as the only other person on the train and she does okay with a limited role. The final scene is beautifully shot.
Review of Runaway Train
