Two escaped convicts and a female railway worker find themselves trapped on a speeding train with no brakes and nobody driving.Two escaped convicts and a female railway worker find themselves trapped on a speeding train with no brakes and nobody driving.Two escaped convicts and a female railway worker find themselves trapped on a speeding train with no brakes and nobody driving.
- Nominated for 3 Oscars
- 2 wins & 8 nominations total
- Al Turner
- (as Reid Cruikshanks)
- Old Con
- (as Norton E. 'Hank' Warden)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaDanny Trejo was visiting a friend who was working as a production assistant on the set when he was offered a job as an extra. Edward Bunker recognized Trejo because they served time in San Quentin State Prison together. Bunker helped Trejo get hired as Eric Roberts' boxing coach. Director Andrey Konchalovskiy was so impressed with Trejo that he gave him a small role. Trejo later stated that he was staggered to find out that the coaching job earned him $320 per day, which was more than he had ever gotten from a robbery.
- GoofsWhen the ill-fated engineer notches out the throttle on the lead engine, the reverser handle (just below the throttle) can be seen in neutral.
- Quotes
Manny: [after listening to Buck's dream] That's bullshit. You're not gonna do nothin' like that. I'll tell you what you gonna do. You gonna get a job. That's what you gonna do. You're gonna get a little job. Some job a convict can get, like scraping off trays in a cafeteria. Or cleaning out toilets. And you're gonna hold onto that job like gold. Because it is gold. Let me tell you, Jack, that is gold. You listenin' to me? And when that man walks in at the end of the day. And he comes to see how you done, you ain't gonna look in his eyes. You gonna look at the floor. Because you don't want to see that fear in his eyes when you jump up & grab his face, and slam him to the floor, and make him scream & cry for his life. So you look right at the floor, Jack. Pay attention to what I'm sayin', motherfucker! And then he's gonna look around the room - see how you done. And he's gonna say "Oh, you missed a little spot over there. Jeez, you didn't get this one here. What about this little bitty spot?" And you're gonna suck all that pain inside you, and you're gonna clean that spot. And you're gonna clean that spot. Until you get that shiny clean. And on Friday, you pick up your paycheck. And if you could do that, if you could do that, you could be president of Chase Manhattan... corporations! If you could do that.
Buck: Not me, man! I wouldn't do that kind of shit. I'd rather be in fuckin' jail.
Manny: More's the pity, youngster. More's the pity.
Buck: Could you do that kind of shit?
Manny: I wish I could.
- Crazy credits"No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity." "But I know none, and therefore am no beast." Richard III - William Shakespeare
- Alternate versionsThe DVD mysteriously edits out the shot of the first helicopter policeman being run over by the wheels of the train. You see him crash into the train windshield and see him fall off, but then you see just a plain shot of the wheels. In all other versions of the film on video and laserdisc have a shot of this man's face coming right at the camera as his body is run over by the wheels of the train. Even the US TV version has a brief shot of this. This shot is present in the UK Arrow Films DVD release.
- ConnectionsEdited into Con Express (2002)
- SoundtracksGloria in D Major
by Antonio Vivaldi (as Vivaldi)
Performed by The USSR Academic Russian Chorus and the Moscow Conservatoire Students Orchestra
It is hard to know what influence Kurosawa had on this, but one can guess. He had been through his rejection in Japan, suicide attempt and film made and financed by the Soviets. He subsequently arranged scant funding for this, started and was foiled. What we have now is supposedly completely reworked. But what we see is Soviet iconography in the trains and snow, and Shakespearean motion toward tragedy. (Kurosawa would do the Shakespearean "Ran" instead of this, and we are lucky for that.)
So this comment will not be on the acting, though Voight is not only superb, but inhabits the character as we fear we would. It is about the icons and the camera. I think we have inherited this from Akira.
The trains have been painted to be big flat black hulks, reshaped with plywood to resemble Soviet machines. We have a Soviet director. Early in the film, we have that train (four locomotives) hit the end of another, demolishing it. In the process, the front of our beast is turned into a ragged tear of heavy metal, racing madly through heavy snow, angry at the weather.
"Unstoppable" takes a few scenes from this: the hitting of the end of another train; the bridge that has the fatal speed limit; the "soldier" lowered from a chopper then pummeled. But it is an altogether different film. Scott is all about energy in the camera. Every scene moves in a dance that is composed. The rhythm and energy is in our eye. He works to give is narrative stances for that eye: TeeVee cameras, characters that are observers and others that comment on observation.
The train is only a prop, the characters only something to carry the narrative thrust. The art is in the eye, on our side of the wall.
This film has three animals: Voight's character, a convict driven to heroic madness, the opposing warden who is every bit as demented and colorful. Both of these are runaway trains, bested by the train itself which has agency of its own. It seems to have killed and ejected the engineer, enticed two convicts aboard, then gone mad, attracting the warden as well. It is "imprisoned" in a braid of rails, designed here to relate to the train as the remarkable prison building is to the humans.
All the cameras are static except the ones following the train, some of which race through the woods the same way we saw in "Rashoman."
It seems that like with "Star Wars," Kurosawa can bless a film by merely breathing on it.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- Also known as
- El tren del escape
- Filming locations
- Anaconda, Montana, USA(Railroad Yard)
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $9,000,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $7,683,620
- Gross worldwide
- $7,683,620
- Runtime1 hour 51 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1