Runaway train may appear to be just another action movie about escaped convicts. Its cinematography, set on an out of control unmanned train on a frozen Alaskan railroad, is dramatic enough to holds its own at this level. The directing switches superbly between long shots of the train surrounded by the wilds of Alaska and close ups of the powerful ice encrusted steel locomotive, man's creation hurtling unstoppably through a place inhospitable to man. These sequences are as much a testament to the builders of railoads as serving the plot.
A hardened criminal called Manny, played with incredible intensity by Jon Voight, escapes a prison run by a vicous authoritarian accompanied by a slow witted petty criminal called Buck, played by Eric Roberts at his best, who aspires to be as tough as Manny. The escape sequence lets the viewer slip into icy Alaska with the convicts. They stow away on the train after they reach a railyard but realize something is wrong when the train continues to speed up, the driver had died of a heart attack.
Onboard they find a young woman rail worker who'd falled asleep in another car. It is here on the train that the plot and the acting really take off. Buck starts to see what it takes to be a tough criminal like Manny, any romantic ideas are quickly quashed. Manny himself, now well into his middle years, has learned the hard way that reality is not to be tricked. In one sequence Buck whines dreamilly about the kind of exciting life he will have outside and on hearing this Manny tears him apart with an uncompromising appraisal of what it will take him to have any kind of life worth living. Manny has learned the hard way and now cannot stand to hear dreamers who think that their wish will make it so. After desribing the kind of cleaning job Buck will have to start with, how he will have to take abuse and stick it out he adds "And if you could do that, if you could do that you could be president of corporations! "
Manny is like Wynand in The Fountainhead who has taken the worst possible route in life whilst never failing to know the nature of his error, and becoming embittered by his own mistake. In one exchange the woman, recoiling from his indifference to Buck's life when pushing him to risk it, says "You think you can sacrifice someone else's life instead of your own! You're an animal" Manny responds, full of clarity, "No, worse! Human! Human!". Is this another cheap attempt to play down humans? I don't think so, I think it's Manny recognising his choice in the matter, his responsibility in that choice and his self disgust at making it. He is simply unwilling to evade reality or mask it in any way. That is why the viewer can respect Manny, whilst knowing he is a bad man, because Manny knows it too, and is willing to confront it and eventually to set himself free of it.
And that is the strength of this film. Manny's character shows us that no matter how mistaken a person's choices, it is the person who recognizes reality for what it is and is prepared to deal with it who will find the solution. The dramatic ending, combining the growth of both convicts and one amazing last effort of the human will by Manny coincides with the arrival of the vicious governer by helicopter. The ending may be somewhat predictable, but in the context of the journey the two convicts have made as characters it is satisfying and right.
