...a periodically effective yet predominantly tedious misfire that squanders a seemingly foolproof setup.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 27, 2021

A rare quality credit for The Cannon Group.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 27, 2021

Unpredictably cohesive elements collaborate, unveiling an intensity and underlying poignancy that come as a great surprise considering the cliché action movie title.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Sep 7, 2020

It's one of the most beautiful and slickly produced pieces of reactionary junk food cinema ever made, and it's glorious.

| Mar 1, 2019

"Runaway Train" isn't just bad -- it's bodaciously bad, grotesquely overblown, lurid in its emotion, big ideas on its brain.

| Jan 4, 2018

It's a great, simple story, and, in the history of action movies, ought to be considered alongside Die Hard and Speed.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 16, 2017

A terrific mix of tightly coiled action and psychoanalysis that has no place in a genre film from the '80s, but works splendidly regardless.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Jan 2, 2016

A thunderous proto-Speed with exploitation trappings, it also works as an existential art movie with a serious director and a dusted-off Akira Kurosawa script.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 7, 2014

A gripping action thriller that's also extremely well acted by Jon Voight and Eric Roberts in Oscar-nominated performances.

| Original Score: B+ | Jun 23, 2011

While RUNAWAY TRAIN does balance action and philosophy quite neatly it's still intriguing to wonder how differently Kurosawa would have handled it

Full Review | Sep 1, 2009

Wrenchingly intense and brutally powerful, Andrei Konchalovsky's film rates as a most exciting action epic and is fundamentally serious enough to work strongly on numerous levels.

| Mar 26, 2009

Highly unusual drama with single premise: survive the runaway train. A metaphor for us all.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 2, 2008

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 5, 2007

Somehow one leaves aside the blatant implausibilities, the coincidences, even Eric Roberts, and takes great pleasure in a breakneck ride to the end of the line.

| Feb 9, 2006

You'll be on the edge of your seat....until it stops

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 12, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Jan 19, 2005

Gets derailed by a mediocre screenplay.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 21, 2004

A real horror: heavy-handed, stupidly gruesome, as claustrophobic as its train cars and prison cells.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 4, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 6, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 6, 2004