Unstoppable (1985)

IMDb

IMDb Oscar Manheim Manny (Jon Voight) plays a hardened convict and expert safecracker serving time in an Alaskan prison. Once the warden receives orders to move Manny back into the general population, he immediately starts mapping out an escape route. Buck (Eric Roberts), a fellow inmate working the laundry, decides to jump on the opportunity and join him. Their plan involves escaping via a freight train, which actually works at first, but things go south fast when the brakes fail and the engineer suffers a heart attack, turning their getaway into an Unstoppable force hurtling toward its destination... (Source: MyTV)

Genre: action, adventure, drama, thriller
Country: USA
Language: English
Runtime: 111 min
Director: Andrey Konchalovskiy
Screenplay: Djordje Milicevic, Paul Zindel, Edward bunker, Akira Kurosawa, ryûzô Kikushima, Hide Oguni glumac
Cast: Jon Voight, Eric Roberts, Rebecca de Mornay, Kyle T. Heffner, John P. Ryan, T. K. Carter, Kenneth McMillan, Stacey Pickren, Walter Wyatt, Edward bunker

listen up, because I mean it..

Good grief, it’s been thirty-five years since I last caught this one on the big screen.
It was a devastating piece of cinema; I think I might actually head down to the local Madison theater just to track it down again.👍

A decent enough flick. Voight really brings his A-game here.

Manny finally found some peace at the end.

Man, what an absolute classic! I can still vividly picture this movie even though it’s been ages since I last sat down to watch it.

It was actually Danny Trejo's first film—and get this—Akira Kurosawa was originally supposed to direct it with Henry Fonda and Peter Falk leading the cast!

I mean, why don't they just jump off the train? (I haven't actually seen the movie myself, I guess)

Pretty solid stuff—got this Shakespearean lead with a killer dynamic going with the warden, all wrapped up in this metaphor about an unstoppable train. That ending sticks with you, too. Voight really nailed it. 👍

@wiredskipper/">@@wiredskipper
If you haven't actually watched it, I fail to see the point in you weighing in at all. 🤣

A snowbound train, American style😁 (well, if you follow the script Akira Kurosawa originally wrote and wanted to direct as his big color debut)...

The movie is total quality stuff. Solid story, great acting—especially Voight—and everything else just hits those genre standards perfectly for that era.

And man, oh man... is that really Danny Trejo's very first role?🙏

The only thing I can't wrap my head around is what on earth the conductor thought he was accomplishing by rappelling down that rope onto the moving train.

Sure, we have the benefit of hindsight knowing the tracks are about to run out, but he’s operating in the dark.

Still, why couldn't he just shadow the train and wait for it to come to a full stop before attempting to apprehend his prisoners?

goldenhound32 said:I honestly don't get it. I mean, what was that manager even thinking, climbing down a rope onto a moving train? I guess he thought he could pull it off, but maybe it was just a bad call.

I guess we all know that the tracks are about to disappear under that Unstoppable train, but he just doesn't seem to realize it.

I guess, maybe, why couldn't he just follow the train and wait for it to come to a full stop before trying to arrest his prisoners?

I guess the manager knew the tracks were going to vanish or that he’d end up crashing right into that factory. Maybe he was part of their inner circle or whatever they call it—he definitely had to be in the loop about what was happening.

And that’s really just one more reason why he should have waited.

What was his plan, exactly? Did he honestly think he could overpower two inmates and then somehow force them, one by one, onto a rope dangling from a helicopter? 😕

goldenhound32 said:I guess that’s just one more reason why it might be better to wait.

I guess he really thought he could take down two prisoners like that and somehow force them one by one onto a rope attached to a helicopter. Maybe he just didn't realize how impossible that was. 😕

The plan was to jump onto the locomotive and bring the whole thing to a halt. That way, we could just send them straight back to prison. Once they reach the engine, the train can be stopped, so I guess there wouldn't even be a need to make them climb back up to the helicopter using a rope.

goldenhound32 said:and honestly, that’s just more reason for him to wait.

What was he thinking? Like he could actually overpower two prisoners and somehow force them one by one onto a rope dangling from a helicopter? 😕

He probably figured he’d find someone as clueless as you on that train and tie them up with that rope instead of those poor inmates, just to take you down a notch since you think you're so smart...

Daniel Ramirez3 said:The plan was simple enough: jump onto the locomotive and bring the whole thing to a halt. That way, they could send everyone straight back to prison. Once they reach the engine, the train can be stopped properly—no need to force anyone to scale their way back up to a helicopter using nothing but a rope.

Fine, I suppose there’s some logic to that. 👍

Is it actually better than Emperor of the North?

Both are absolute classics..

goldenhound32 said:Fair enough, I see your point 👍

🤣

I managed to Skip it!🎉

Michael Ortiz68 said:Is it better than Emperor of the North?

No.

But if you want a real recommendation, check out Končalovski's last American film from that era—Siberia. It’s a three-and-a-half-hour epic. That's the movie that actually landed him offers from Hollywood. Honestly, it's a shame he left; his American films were superior (Uncle Vanja, A Romance of Lovers).

The action sequences are expertly directed, and the atmosphere they build is just spot on. I can honestly say this ranks right up there in my personal top tier of action movies—not quite reaching the level of absolute perfection like Die Hard, but damn close. Toward the end, watching Jon Voight go absolutely ballistic during those train scenes, he reminded me so much of another iconic role played by a certain actor, though the specific movie is escaping me right now... I did catch two little logical hiccups, though, which isn't really a dealbreaker for an action flick. (SPOILER)(1. That moment when the runaway train slices through the locomotive like a hot knife through butter and somehow just keeps rolling along smoothly, and 2. When Jon Voight is fighting his way toward the engine and at one point he’s just dangling underneath, scraping against the tracks—there is no way that's physically possible.)
Now that I've sat through it, I find myself wondering how on earth Akira Kurosawa would have handled his own version of this story...