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And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better—cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?---Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground Even now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil memory. I have many evil memories now, but ... hadn’t I better end my “Notes” here? I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write them, anyway I have felt ashamed all the time I’ve been writing this story; so it’s hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment. Why, to tell long stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from real life, and rankling spite in my underground world, would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an anti-hero are expressly gathered together here, and what matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are...
Hope
To be human is to be a miracle of evolution conscious of its own miraculousness — a consciousness beautiful and bittersweet, for we have paid for it with a parallel awareness not only of our fundamental improbability but of our staggering fragility, of how physiologically precarious our survival is and how psychologically vulnerable our sanity. To make that awareness bearable, we have evolved a singular faculty that might just be the crowning miracle of our consciousness: hope.--
Erich Fromm
Runaway Train (1985)
An exploration of Andrei Konchalovsky's existential action-thriller. Born from the mind of Akira Kurosawa, forged in the Alaskan frost.
“The train is a symbol for whatever you want it to be,” the film’s director, Andrei Konchalovsky, explains. “It can be viewed as a prison because they can’t get out of it, or considered as freedom because they escaped from prison on it, or considered as our civilization running out of control because no-one can stop it.”
"The ending of the movie is astonishing in its emotional impact. I will not describe it. All I will say is that Konchalovsky has found the perfect visual image to express the ideas in his film. Instead of a speech, we get a picture, and the picture says everything that needs to be said. Afterward, just as the screen goes dark, there are a couple of lines from Shakespeare that may resonate more deeply the more you think about the Voight character."
Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky's second American film may well be the only existential adventure flick in Hollywood history.
Two prisoners, Manny (Jon Voight) and Buck (Eric Roberts), escape from a desolate Alaskan maximum-security facility. They hop aboard a speeding train, making a clean escape. But the engineer has suffered a heart attack, and the train goes out of control.
"Runaway Train" is a reminder that the great adventures are great because they happen to people we care about."Runaway Train" is based on an original screenplay by the Japanese master Akira Kurosawa, whose best movies use action as a means of studying character.
"The nihilism and the vicious intensity of Mr. Voight's performance here are entirely different from anything else he has done on screen."
Andrei Konchalovsky
Andrei Konchalovsky is one of the most fascinating chameleon-like figures in world cinema. Emerging from the legendary VGIK (the Soviet state film school), his career is a masterclass in artistic survival, structural adaptation, and stylistic reinvention, spanning Soviet art-house epics, mainstream Hollywood genre films, and austere late-career historical reflections.
The Tarkovsky Collaborations & Early Soviet Period
Before cementing his own directorial voice, Konchalovsky was a crucial creative partner to Andrei Tarkovsky. The two co-wrote Tarkovsky’s graduation short The Steamroller and the Violin (1960), the devastating wartime drama Ivan's Childhood (1962), and the monumental Andrei Rublev (1966).
While Tarkovsky leaned into the deeply metaphysical, Konchalovsky’s early solo directorial work favored a more grounded, visceral, and sometimes deeply poetic realism.
The Story of Asya Klyachina (1967): Shot using a mix of professional actors and real Soviet collective farm workers, this gritty, semi-documentary look at rural life was deemed too candid by Soviet censors. It was promptly shelved for two decades, serving as a testament to his uncompromising lens.
Siberiade (1979): A grand, multi-generational epic tracking the structural and societal shifts of a remote Siberian village over three generations. It won the Grand Prix at Cannes and served as his ticket out of the USSR.
The Hollywood Detour
Unlike many of his contemporaries who struggled with expatriation, Konchalovsky adapted remarkably well to the American studio system in the 1980s. He brought a distinct European texture, structural precision, and psychological weight to classic Western genre templates:
Runaway Train (1985): Based on an original screenplay by Akira Kurosawa, this existential action thriller features powerhouse, Oscar-nominated performances from Jon Voight and Eric Roberts. It remains a masterpiece of relentless kinetic energy and philosophical dread.
Tango & Cash (1989): A fascinating artifact of late-80s hyper-masculine blockbusters. While Konchalovsky was replaced late in production due to creative clashes over the film's tone, his slick visual craftsmanship still anchors the final cut.
Late Career Realism and Historicism
Returning to Europe and Russia, Konchalovsky pivoted toward deeply focused, aesthetically rigorous historical and psychological inquiries. His late works are defined by high-contrast black-and-white cinematography, meticulous framing, and a clinical dissection of power dynamics, ideology, and human resilience.
| Film | Key Theme / Setting | Aesthetic Style |
| The Postman's White Nights (2014) | Isolation in a remote Russian village | Docudrama featuring real non-actors |
| Paradise (2016) | Intersecting monologues during the Holocaust | Stark 4:3 aspect ratio, high-contrast black-and-white |
| Dear Comrades! (2020) | The suppressed 1962 Novocherkassk massacre | Forensic, elegant, austere historical recreation |
The Creative Paradox
The film's unique tone comes from a striking collision of creative voices:
The Kurosawa DNA: Kurosawa originally wrote the script in the late 1960s, intending it to be his first color film and English-language debut. Though that project collapsed, his narrative skeleton remains: a relentless, unstoppable mechanical force acting as a crucible for human desperation.
Konchalovsky's Realism: Soviet émigré director Andrei Konchalovsky brought a bleak, non-Western perspective to the rugged Alaskan landscape. He avoids glamour, opting for a harsh, sweat-and-grease aesthetic that makes the environment feel actively hostile.
The Cannon Group Production: Produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus—moguls famous for B-movie action—the film manages to satisfy the demand for tension and spectacle while preserving its arthouse soul.
Runaway Train is a high-octane action-thriller directed by Andrei Konchalovsky and produced by the legendary B-movie studio Cannon Films. While it presents as a gritty 1980s action flick, it is widely regarded as one of the most "philosophical" and artistic entries in the genre, largely due to its origins with Japanese master Akira Kurosawa.
Production History & The Kurosawa Connection
The film has one of the most fascinating "development hell" stories in Hollywood:
Original Script: Akira Kurosawa wrote the original screenplay in the 1960s, intending it to be his first color film and his English-language debut.
The Shelf: After financial and production difficulties in the U.S., Kurosawa abandoned the project. It sat for nearly 20 years until Cannon Films (Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus) acquired it.
Director: Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky took the helm, bringing a cold, existential European sensibility to the American action format.
Cast Debuts: The film is notable for being the feature film debut of Danny Trejo, who was originally hired as a boxing consultant but was cast as an inmate after being recognized by screenwriter (and ex-con) Edward Bunker. It also featured a young Tommy "Tiny" Lister Jr.
The visceral, feral energy Jon Voight brought to the character of Manny was deeply rooted in real-world criminal history, almost entirely shaped by his collaboration with Edward Bunker.
As an ex-convict who spent years in maximum-security institutions (like San Quentin) before becoming an accomplished crime novelist and screenwriter, Bunker served as the ultimate bridge between the film's Hollywood elements and the grim realities of long-term incarceration.
How Edward Bunker Influenced the Character
Bunker didn't just rewrite the dialogue to inject authentic, biting prison slang into Akira Kurosawa's narrative framework—he actually became the physical and psychological blueprint for Manny.
Voight essentially based his entire performance, speech patterns, and physical mannerisms directly on Bunker. By studying Bunker's real-world perspective on recidivism (the tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend) and the psychological toll of institutionalization, Voight was able to strip away any typical Hollywood "movie criminal" tropes. Instead, he channeled the mindset of a hardened, career criminal who views the world with cold, survivalist hostility.
Voight's Preparation
To fully inhabit Manny's hyper-intense, institutionalized persona, Voight underwent rigorous preparation that relied heavily on Bunker's guidance and connections:
Real Prison Immersion: Bunker utilized his firsthand knowledge and background to help introduce Voight to the actual environment of maximum-security convicts, allowing the actor to absorb the tense, volatile atmosphere of prison life.
The "Tough Guy" Retinue: Bunker's presence on set ran so deep that he even helped cast the film with real-world authenticity. For instance, while on set, Bunker ran into Danny Trejo—whom he recognized from their time together back in San Quentin. Bunker helped secure Trejo a job as Eric Roberts' boxing coach in the film, marking Trejo's very first on-screen film appearance and surrounding Voight with a tangibly gritty, authentic supporting cast.
Through Bunker's direct influence, Voight managed to deliver a performance so raw and unhinged that it earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor and an Academy Award nomination, successfully elevating Manny into a truly legendary, tragic figure of 1980s cinema.
Edward Bunker’s thumbprint on the film extends even further when you look at how he actively broke down the traditional "glamorous anti-hero" archetype that Hollywood loved to rely on.
The De-Romanticism of the Criminal Mind
Before Bunker got his hands on the script, earlier drafts flirted with making Manny a more sympathetic, misunderstood rebel. Bunker fought hard against this. Drawing from his own youth as one of San Quentin’s youngest inmates and a lifetime spent navigating maximum-security institutions, he wanted Manny to reflect the stark, uncomfortable psychological reality of a truly institutionalized man.
In one of the film's most revealing scenes, Buck (Eric Roberts) excitedly fantasizes about what they will do with their freedom, talking about getting regular jobs. Manny snaps at him with pure, venomous contempt:
"Get a job? I'd rather freeze to death... You're gonna get a job? A job washing dishes, or a security guard? Some boss telling you what to do? Punching a clock?... You can't stand it. You'll stick up a gas station just to get back where you belong."
This dialogue is pure Bunker. It perfectly encapsulates the tragedy of institutionalization: Manny is so thoroughly warped by the prison system that he perceives the mundane structure of normal society as a worse cage than the one he just escaped. He doesn't know how to exist without a wall to kick against.
The History of Kurosawa's Script
Akira Kurosawa originally conceived the project in 1966 after reading a real newspaper article about a runaway train in New York. Fresh off the grueling production of Red Beard (1965), he partnered with American producers to make it his very first color film and English-language debut.
The production fell apart due to severe winter weather delays in upstate New York and Kurosawa’s meticulous, slow-paced working style, which clashed with Hollywood financing. Decades later, the script found its way to Cannon Films, where Edward Bunker (the ex-convict turned crime novelist who played Mr. Blue in Reservoir Dogs) rewrote the dialogue to give it a brutal, authentic American prison slang flavor.
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The Climax & The Shakespearean Soul
The final five minutes elevate Runaway Train from a gritty thriller into a full-blown existential tragedy.
Manny manages to uncouple the lead locomotive from the rest of the train, saving Buck and Sara but trapping himself on a single engine that is still hurtling forward toward a dead end at maximum speed. His nemesis, Warden Ranken, is chained inside the cab, broken and defeated.
Instead of panic, Manny experiences a moment of transcendent triumph. He climbs onto the roof of the roaring, snow-covered locomotive, bracing himself against the freezing wind with his arms outstretched—finally, completely free from the cages of society, even if it means his immediate death.
The film cuts to black on this striking image, accompanied by a haunting quote from William Shakespeare’s Richard III:
"No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity.
But I know none, and therefore am no beast."
By concluding with these lines, the film leaves us with a parting philosophical riddle: Is Manny subhuman because he refuses to adapt to the civilized world, or is he something greater than a man—an untamable force of nature that cannot be broken by a cage?
Critical Reception & Awards
Despite being a box office disappointment, the film was a massive critical success and remains a cult classic.
Academy Awards: * Nominated for Best Actor (Jon Voight)
Golden Globes: Jon Voight won the award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama.
Cannes Film Festival: Nominated for the Palme d'Or.
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