{"id":15389,"date":"2013-07-19T22:34:13","date_gmt":"2013-07-19T21:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/?p=15389"},"modified":"2013-07-19T22:39:29","modified_gmt":"2013-07-19T21:39:29","slug":"blu-ray-runaway-train","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2013\/07\/19\/blu-ray-runaway-train\/","title":{"rendered":"Blu-ray: Runaway Train"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Runaway<\/a><\/p>\n

The best film to emerge from Cannon in the 1980s was\u00a0this tense thriller about two prisoners who escape from an\u00a0Alaskan high-security jail.<\/p>\n

For those who don’t remember Cannon<\/a>, they were the studio who\u00a0gained something of a reputation as schlockmeisters, under\u00a0the leadership of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus.<\/p>\n

An over-abundance of Chuck Norris and Charles Bronson action\u00a0films along with such films as Breakin\u2019 2: Electric Boogaloo<\/a>\u00a0and Tough Guys Don’t Dance<\/a> soured their reputation.<\/p>\n

However, the great exception was Runaway Train directed by Andrei Konchalovsky<\/a>, and loosely based on a\u00a0screenplay by Akira Kurosawa, it is a compelling mixture of\u00a0the brutal and beautiful.<\/p>\n

The three central characters are all deeply unpleasant: Manny (Jon Voight), a hardened bank robber; Buck\u00a0(Eric Roberts), convicted of rape; and Warden Ranken (John\u00a0P. Ryan), who at times seems as crazy as his prisoners.<\/p>\n

But the performances are first-rate, with Voight giving\u00a0one of the best of his career: seeing him struggle with the\u00a0forces of nature – when his character Manny is a force of nature – is the central pull of the film.<\/p>\n