Runaway Train

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Movie
German title Runaway Train
Original title Runaway Train
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1985
length 111 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Andrei Konchalovsky
script Edward Bunker
Djordje Milicevic
Paul Zindel
production Yoram Globus
Menahem Golan
Robert A. Goldston
Henry T. Weinstein
Robert Whitmore
music Trevor Jones
camera Alan Hume
cut Henry Richardson
occupation

Runaway Train (alternate title: Express to Hell ) is an American thriller from 1985 . The director was Andrei Konchalovsky , the writer wrote Edward Bunker , Djordje Milicevic and Paul Zindel . , Starring Jon Voight and Eric Roberts . In German-speaking countries, the film was shown in cinemas under its original title, while Express in hell is the later title for television broadcasts.

action

Two inmates, the indomitable life sentence Oscar “Manny” Manheim and the younger Buck, who has been incarcerated for rape, according to his own account for seducing minors, flee from a maximum security prison in snowy Alaska in the dead of winter .

You reach a train station and hide in the driver's cab of a locomotive of a train that consists of four heavy diesel locomotives . The driver suffers a heart attack while maneuvering . He tries to stop the train by emergency braking, but then dies and falls off the train. Its drive is only temporarily braked by the applied brakes and it becomes inexorably faster after the brake pads have scorched. In their hiding place, Manny and Buck have no inkling of what is happening at the other end of the train and are happy that it is leaving the station in the direction of the open route. Manny eventually gets suspicious first as the train moves faster and faster and none of the usual warning signals can be heard. Meanwhile, those in charge of the railway company are desperately looking for a way to stop the train. An oncoming train is directed to a siding, but it is too slow, so that the locomotive train, which is already traveling at very high speed, collides with the last car (a caboose ) and tears it to pieces, which does not stop the locomotive train.

Manny and Buck try to get on the front locomotives and meet the worker Sara, who was hiding in one of the locomotives from the cold and fell asleep there. She had woken up from the accident and had activated the fanfare of the locomotive, which informed the control center that there were people on the train, whereupon they gave up the plan to derail the train and were feverishly looking for a possibility To lead the train safely over the routes to buy time for the crew. The two escapees learn from Sara that the train cannot be stopped because the coupling is switched to the front driver's cab. This lead locomotive cannot be reached easily because the locomotive behind it, an old EMD F7 with a streamlined driver's cab, has no front gangway and the front door in the driver's cab is jammed due to the collision. Under the guidance of Sara, the two escapees manage to disconnect the control cables of the two rear locomotives, which then switch off. This reduces the speed so much that an older bridge can just barely be passed at a speed that does not allow it to collapse. Manny then decides to jump on the engine in front, but is stopped by Buck, who wants to take over the attempt himself, as Manny's hand has been injured since the breakout. Buck fails and withdraws, whereupon Manny does not want to let him into the locomotive again and then clearly reproaches him for being too soft.

Since there is a risk that the train will derail in the tight bends near a chemical plant and cause an environmental disaster , those responsible at the railway company reluctantly decide to derail it on a dead track . Meanwhile, the prison director Ranken and other judicial officers are chasing the train with a helicopter . While trying to jump on the train, one of the officers fell into a window of the second locomotive before falling off the train. Manny is spurred on by the presence of Ranken, as he has a longstanding and deep personal enmity with him. He climbs through the previously destroyed window onto the top of the second locomotive and tries to jump onto the lead locomotive. He falls into the connecting cables of the locomotives, the couplings of which crush his injured left hand. He still manages to get on the leading locomotive and hides in the driver's cab that was destroyed by the collision.

Meanwhile the prison director arrives at the locomotive. Manny knocks him down and handcuffs him in the driver's cab. He manages to loosen the coupling to the remaining locomotives in order to save Buck and Sara. He waves to the two of them, climbs onto the roof of the locomotive, stretches out his arms and drives freely in the wind towards death. The foreseeable derailment of the train is no longer shown and the film ends with the fade-in of a Shakespeare quote: "Even the wildest animal knows the emotion of pity" - "I don't know any and therefore am not an animal" ( Richard III ).

Reviews

The film became internationally known and received very good reviews. Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun Times on January 17, 1986 that the film was a “great adventure”, but - unlike many films of the time - not through special effects, but through the characters. He compared the film with the film The Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa , which provided a template for the script. He said the director succeeded "perfectly" in visually implementing the scriptwriters' ideas.

James Berardinelli compared the movie to ReelViews with the film speed , however, meant that Express in hell have a better script and better drawn characters. He described the thriller as "intelligent", which, in his opinion, only applies to very few films of the genre during this period.

On www.prisma-online.de the film was described as “rapid”, “gripping” and “tough”.

The lexicon of international films found: “A brilliantly staged action thriller; the first film made in the West by the Russian director Konchalovsky. "

Awards

Jon Voight and Eric Roberts were nominated for an Oscar , and Henry Richardson received another nomination for editing. Jon Voight won the Golden Globe Award , for which Eric Roberts and the film were also nominated for Best Motion Picture Drama .

Andrej Konchalovsky was nominated for the Golden Palm . Henry Richardson was nominated for the American Cinema Editors Award . The film won the Motion Picture Sound Editors Award .

backgrounds

The film was made in collaboration with the Alaska Railroad , which, however, prohibited showing the company's logo.

The locomotives used are an EMD GP40-2 with a low front hood, a streamlined EMD F7 and two high-hood EMD GP7s .

In 2001, a very similar incident actually occurred in the United States involving a “continuous” train. The 2010 film Unstoppable refers to this.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Runaway Train . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 56565 / V). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ^ Review by Roger Ebert
  3. ^ Review by James Berardinelli
  4. ↑ prisma-online.de
  5. ^ Runaway Train. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used