Andrej Koncalovskij
Runaway Train

There are films that end up in the well-known oblivion, and honestly, this is not always displeasing: - of course, it's a bit childish (but what is more childish than dreams at the Cinema?), as if a film, we were saying, which is cherished and loved remained in a corner, sheltered from occasional or undeserving glances, to be rediscovered at the right moment.

Runaway Train before ending up in oblivion was not a film that passed unnoticed, let's note. The three Oscar nominations, as well as the other THREE at the Golden Globe in '86 (of which one turned into an award for the lead actor) say quite a bit about it.

And if I believe we speak of masterpieces, I like to add a why. Let's delve into and illustrate: for example, there are "missed masterpieces" that nonetheless maintain a high level of reference, but are still missed. For the film directed by Andrey Konchalovsky, I add a different why: "masterpiece despite everything".

A story can be as simple as you want, and a film can have many gaps, but if the message contains explosive force, then its impact will be vast, to the point of transcending the screenplay if not the film itself. Specifically, the story is by a certain Akira Kurosawa, and perhaps we've already said everything; if we talk, I mean, about a scale of high register values, when discussing Cinema.

Quickly, plot and characters:

- from a maximum-security prison, where inmates are treated like animals, two prisoners manage to escape. The prison Director personally takes charge of capturing the escapees, making it a deeply personal matter as well as one of Duty; of the two fugitives, only Manny truly wants it, the tough one he never managed to break.

Manny (Jon Voight) and Buck (Eric Roberts) will thus face the ice and the harsh winter of those places. They manage to reach a railway station and hide in a locomotive hoping to reach freedom. The train, which is without passengers - departs, but a heart attack strikes down the engineer: a malignant Deus Ex Machina, and the train is now out of control brutally picking up speed. The escapees will be spotted and hunted by a helicopter, with the same prison director Ranken (John P. Ryan) on board, while control room operators desperately try, using various means, not just conventional, to somehow stop the runaway train. With them travels, because "forced" by the events, a young maintenance woman who, unbeknownst to everyone, including the fugitives, was in another locomotive. Only later will she surprise our protagonists. Sara (Rebecca De Mornay), against her will, will thus be terribly involved in the story...

...time will run inexorably and lead them to a fate that will not be the same for everyone.

"The despite everything":

- this film is deeply rooted in the '80s, and the soundtrack, essentially ridiculous, is quite indicative of this, but fortunately used sparingly and, at least in key moments, works providing an evocative and powerful value in line with the lyricism of the right moments. In essence, a discontinuous work and at times gaudy, speaking of the music. Then comes the problem of plausibility, and there are some lapses right in the introductory phase, a pity. The escape from a maximum-security prison is not that from a nunnery, this should be known to everyone, and - above all - one cannot give the spectator such a realistic representation of prisons, as they are: violent, suspicious, loaded with a thousand tensions, only to see them flee with a plan reminiscent of a "Ducktales Gang". The last note of the "despite everything" concerns the antagonist who pursues our "heroes", as the questionable prerogatives and power granted to Ranken outside his prison are at times excessive and childishly permitted. So, these are significant shortcomings. Paradoxically testifying - in this case - how masterpieces can be such "despite everything," due to an involvement and a remarkable crescendo that transforms everything into an epic far beyond the context.

The Work.

Runaway train is a monster: alive, of steel, black, that transforms gradually. It grows in the eyes of spectators and leads them gently into an allegory of immense breadth and not only evocative but philosophical. Here lies the energy, and the brilliance if we will. The drama is not developed through the eternal battle of Good and Evil, finally: No. The authors say something else...

... Akira Kurosawa and Edward Bunker (the latter among the screenwriters) do not speculate on the above-mentioned issue par excellence, rather it shines even if in dark tones, explodes, the dark side of man understood in his fragility dedicated to an inescapable transformation, and, it is always little reflected upon, the love that belongs to him. Such poorly evaluated truths, if not even misunderstood. Were it not so, the ending could not be so poignant leaving us with an emotion anchored to the stomach which cannot and does not want to detach from us, after the closing credits. On Voight’s face is sculpted and revealed - sequence by sequence - his deepest soul, until it appears in its completeness, only at the end.

The Master Kurosawa (at that time director) already in '75 provided proof of knowing how to deal with certain themes, when he delivered an undisputed masterpiece to cinema: Dersu Uzala. Surely that experience is reflected ten years later in the protagonists of Runaway Train and runs more boldly on the tracks of our runaway train.

As for his part, Edward Bunker, could only offer the director the other colors necessary to give the film an intimate strength on the man at the edge of himself. Bunker is a screenwriter with a real criminal past behind him (just know that he holds the sad record of being the youngest inmate at San Quentin Prison) and this has certainly contributed to him being able to capture with unfortunate sensitivity the baseness of the human soul, its weaknesses but also its most vivid strength, the valor, its secret and contradictory nature that stirs in everyone’s desires.

Crescendo:

The energy of this story that becomes a poem lives in the performance achieved by Voight's interpretation, offering us a depth and a depth seemingly inaccessible, embodying Manny as I believe very few could have at that time. His character, slowly takes off towards his personal Armageddon, towards a mythical duel, then nothing will regard the freedom he could obtain by escaping, and, which, seemed it had to be something else for the viewers as well.

Manny, who is astute - if albeit a man who has always lived at the bottom of society, is not caught off guard by the arrival of Ranker, who will come down from the helicopter onto the speeding cars. Manny will disarm and handcuff him inside the engine controlling the entire train. For Ranker it will be a total defeat. because of what he represents (as Director of the prison and a Failed Duty). Not only has he failed to capture the two escapees, he will be dumbfounded and taken aback by the fact that Manny no longer wants to stop the train, even though now he could so by just pressing a button. Because now Ranker will die as a prisoner, handcuffed to a monster of steel, so modern, so technological and ... unmanageable, just like the world he leaves behind.

Manny will nail Ranken to this truth, showing him how the freedom Manny wants to achieve is actually superior to that civilization which Ranken defends in the name of justice far from being as civilization pretends and imposes.

Mastery.

The authors have been talked about, but not the direction. Everything in its own time, just like this film teaches. Runaway train, at an unspecified point in the story and depending on the sensitivity of the viewer, gently assumes such symbolic strength, that it pervades and impresses the story until it eclipses everything that those characters originally told us. Here lies the director's touch.

The direction exploited the energies that were intrinsic to the subject of Kurosawa, which, like a fire under the ashes, ignited the underlying meanings of what is in fact a Greek tragedy. The violent moments between Buck and Manny can very well be those of a disillusioned disciple by his mentor, of the naivety present in violent and abandoned people, of those who can no longer grasp the grotesque and ironic meanings of existence, our need for heroes to emulate, even if they are the most negative; while the figure of Sara is and will be central in every sense - and, precisely through her eyes, we can decipher the contrasts that other authors would treat with tried and tested Manichaeism and superficiality. Think, for example, of how the philosophical and dramatic figure is exceptionally elaborated through an action movie. Sorry if that's not much. And it is an action film, let us reiterate: from beginning to end.

Konchalovsky's stylism, confined in small spaces and alternated with external shots - always chasing something or someone, speaks of the mastery of an invisible eye never caught in error, never losing its intimate strength. Above all, and let it remain as a warning, it demonstrates the ineptitude of the "cinema" that prevails in this lousy decade, with directors unable to conceive action and violence with mature style, denying the shots the breath and peace necessary to grasp the depth of tensions.

Memorable Manny when, like a beast, he beats Buck bloodily and stops only at Sara's shouted pleas for mercy. Manny will give unprecedented meanings to the words "animal" and "man", bringing them both into another dimension. The movie ticket would be worth it for this scene. Watch it.

There is no beast so fierce that it does not have a shred of pity. But I have none, therefore I am no beast. (Richard III – Shakespeare)

Manny will be framed for the last time as he fights the wind and the storm, standing and arms spread - to meet death. The shots of his friends in prison, behind bars, in close-up, with smiles confused by scars, will alternate with those of Manny on the locomotive that gets forever lost in the storm. As they promised him before he fled, their spirit and their soul would live with him if he conquered freedom.

Manny, before joining his fate to that of his enemy, will manage to uncouple the carriage where Buck and Sara lay embraced and resigned, thus saving them from death. Buck's screams calling Manny when he realizes the sacrifice of his hero, imploring him not to leave because it was together that they were supposed to escape, together that they should have made it, are as desperate as those of a son seeing his father die. Stomach-twisting.

With Manny, Buck, Sara, and Ranken, we remain suspended in the epic of a true Antihero and, in the soul, as the film gradually tracks along the rails of a senseless railway, will be printed a black stain, distorted, crossing mountains and white, desolate landscapes, like a monster devouring those who approach it and transforming them into something else.