2007 Movie List

runaway train

I’m watching one movie from every year I’ve been alive in chronological order. We are now up to 1985.

I live in a small town that has two major train lines running right through the middle of it. I don’t know how many trains pass through our little burg on any given day but it is a lot. You can hardly drive from one side of the town to the other without getting stopped by a train. Sometimes two. Or three. It is very annoying. I used to carry a book with me in my car and whenever I was stopped waiting on a train I’d read a few pages. I finished more than one novel that way.

Despite this, I still love trains. I remember the first time I ever rode a train. We were riding across France. I sat in my window seat with my headset on, listening to music and watching the beautiful countryside glide by.

Trains are so much better than planes. They might not be as fast, but they are much more comfortable and pleasant. I wish we had more trains in the USA. I’d take them everywhere.

I love movies about trains. I’ve watched Westerns where they are building the first train lines out west. I’ve seen horror films with some crazed killer stalking prey on a train. There are mysteries and thrillers set on trains. One day I’m gonna make a huge playlist of all the movies that have trains in them. That would make a fun viewing.

Not all train movies are good, of course. There isn’t anything special about a train that makes your story interesting. Runaway Train is a good example of this.

Jon Voight plays Oscar “Manny” Manheim a ruthless convict being held in Alaska’s Stonehaven Maximum Security Prison. He’s so terrible the warden has had him locked away in solitary confinement for three years. When the courts say he can’t do that, Manheim is released into general pop.

Though the prison is supposed to be some kind of Alcatraz-like inescapable place, Manheim easily gets out by having fellow inmate Buck McGeehy (Eric Roberts) roll him out in a dirty clothes hamper. Inside the laundromat, they grease themselves up and slip out through a sewer tunnel. From there they hop aboard the titular train.

Darn their luck, the train conductor has a heart attack and falls off the train. In doing so he destroys the brakes and sends the train heading down the line at full speed. Rebecca DeMornay plays a train employee who is pretty useless, honestly.

There are some dispatchers back at the base, who have computerized systems to track where the train is going. They call upcoming stations to try to stop the thing, but they are pretty useless as well, honestly.

The film periodically attempts to ring some tension out of the speeding train, but this is no Speed (1994) and they mostly fail at it. Every time they cut to the dispatch station

Voight is sporting some godawful facial hair and an even worse accent. Everyone else seems to be trying their best, but it all just falls sort-of flat. It is the type of film where after watching it I just kind of shrug my shoulders and go, “that was something,” and the look for something else to watch.

sharkys machine

Though it was made in 1981 Sharky’s Machine feels very much like a 1970s crime thriller. It stars and was directed by Burt Reynolds, who was right at the edge of the height of his fame, within a few years he’d be box office poison. He plays Sharky, a loose-cannon narcotics detective who gets demoted after carelessly chasing a drug dealer and inadvertently getting a bus driver shot. He’s put on the vice squad, which within the context of this film is the dregs of the police department.

When he realizes that some high-class call girls are using names whose letters translate into phone numbers he talks his Lieutenant (Charles Durning) into getting seven wire tapes. He gets six, with one number gaining pushback from the higher-ups. Sharky figures there must be a reason for that, and that the reason is probably corrupt. He gets his friend Nosh (Richard Libertini) to run his own tap.

The phone belongs to Dominoe (Rachel Ward) and one of her clients is a candidate running for governor. This leads Sharky to set up 24/7 surveillance on the girl and sets up a lot of intrigues and ultimately murder for our film.

The plot is pretty standard crime drama stuff. Reynolds proves to be a steady hand behind the camera. He mostly plays it safe, but he adds a few things to the film to make it interesting. The middle section of the film is mostly him spying on Dominoe from a building across the street. He uses binoculars and telescopes to peek in her windows while listening to her through the taps.

Sharky develops a one-sided connection to the girl. The film connects them by cutting from him to her and back again, sometimes visually putting them in the same room together though in reality they are separated. Eventually, they do wind up actually together with Sharky protecting her from the killer (and always awesome (Henry Silva).

The trouble is that while he’s been watching her for days through his binoculars and listening to her every sound, she has no idea who he is. They scuffle and to Reynold’s credit, he doesn’t soften his character, allowing him to slap her around in his anger to find out more information on the killer. Later when she softens to him he leans in for a kiss but again to Reynolds’s credit, he has his character pull away and doesn’t force himself upon her. But naturally, in the very next scene, he shows his sensitive side and she’s all over him. They say the studio made him cut about twenty minutes from the film and the rumor is most of what fell on the cutting room floor was the development of their relationship, but as it is, she comes on way too fast.

It was also interesting to see Sharky get demoted for causing the bus driver to get shot. That scene is a pretty typical action scene, the type you’ve seen in a million cop action flicks. Something goes wrong in the bust and the bad guy gets away. Sharky chases after him, paying little attention to the collateral damage he might be causing. When the bad guy gets on the bus Sharky jumps on too. Then he shoots the guy in the leg causing him to shoot the bus driver on accident. In a million other movies Sharky would be hailed as a hero, but here his actions are seen as dangerous leading to demotion.

The best parts of the film are when Sharky is working with the rest of his Vice Squad compatriots (his “machine” if you will). The cast includes Brian Keith and Bernie Casey and the scenes with them trying to solve the casework really well. Reynolds has good chemistry with Rachel Ward too. But once things move from detective mode to action movie things get boring.

I was surprised by how much I liked this film. I’ve never been a huge Burt Reynolds fan and I watched Stick, which he also directed a few months ago, and mostly hated it. But he does well here. If you like 1970s crime movies with some neo-noir trappings then this comes recommended.