DVD. Run time: 111 mins. Language: English. Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky s second American film may well be the only existential adventure flick in Hollywood history. Two prisoners Manny (Jon Voight) and Buck (Eric Roberts) escape from a desolate Alaskan maximum-security facility. They hop aboard a speeding train making a clean escape. But the engineer has suffered a heart attack and the train goes out of control. To prevent a disastrous head-on collision the railroad heads decide to derail the runaway train killing its occupants to save the lives of hundreds of others. Once Manny catches on to what s happening he tries to jump off the train only to be talked out of such a foolhardy act by railroad employee Sara (Rebecca DeMornay). As doom approaches Manny apparently goes mad viciously preventing any attempts to stop the train or rescue its passengers: if he s to die and if the others are to be saved it will be on his terms or no terms. Runaway Train was slated as a project for Akira Kurosawa in 1970 but for various creative and scheduling reasons it remained on the back burner for 15 years. Hal Erickson Rovi