Oscar "Manny" Manheim (Voight), a safecracker and hardened convict, is the prison yard "boss" in an Alaska prison. The vicious prison administrator wants to do away with Manny, so the ornery and obnoxious convict makes a break with Buck (Roberts), a young, cocky, and dimwitted sidekick. The two jump a four-car locomotive that, unbeknownst to them, has no brakes and no one at the throttle: the engineer died of a heart attack and fell out just as it was leaving the station. Also along for the ride is Sara (De Mornay), a railway worker who was catching a nap on board. The rest of the movie concerns their efforts to stop or get off the train as it attains 80 mph speeds across the frozen countryside, and railroad officials' efforts at same, not knowing about the stowaways. The Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky shot this bleak and brutal 1985 existential drama based on a story by the great Japanese director Kurosawa, who had originally hoped to film it in upstate New York.
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The review of this Movie prepared by David Loftus
