15 Best Movie Thrillers From The 1980s
5. Runaway Train
On the surface, Runaway Train is a particularly highbrow thriller. Directed by very serious Russian auteur Andrei Konchalovsky and with a writing credit for Japanese legend Akira Kurosawa, the film has, excuse the pun, ideas above its station.
Artistic pretensions aside, though (the film ends on a Shakespeare quote), Runaway Train is a muscular and hard hitting thriller with a fantastic gimmick at its centre. Two criminals, played by Jon Voight and Eric Roberts, have busted out of the big house in an Alaskan wasteland. They board a train to make their escape, but things go awry: an employee remains on board, and the train is out of control.
The setting - both the train itself and the harsh tundra - gives the film much of its heft, as does Voight’s gruff but honourable turn as lead escapologist Oscar Manheim. Eric Roberts is soleful if mumbly as Voight’s sidekick, and Rebecca De Mornay is allotted a decent few action setpieces in a slightly underwritten role.
The film picks up pace like the train it’s set on, by the end hurtling to an inevitable but well earned conclusion. It failed to find an audience at the time, but deserves consideration as one of the great cult films of the decade.