By Erin Free
RUNAWAY TRAIN (1985) Boasting two wonderfully off-the-rails performances from Jon Voight and Eric Roberts, this hard-charging thriller has a blinding sense of pace and rich characterisation, as two escaped convicts find themselves on an out-of-control train shuttling its way across a devastated snow-scape. Symbolism and allegory run riot in this desperate tale of men on a white-knuckle dead-end journey.
UNFAITHFUL (2002) Though this super-stylish effort from Adrian Lyne (Fatal Attraction) is notable for its intelligent look at a suburban marriage on the skids, it is most fondly remembered for its bravura Oscar nominated leading performance from Diane Lane. In one of the film’s best scenes, Lane sits on a commuter train and relives in explicit detail the recent sexual encounter that will eventually up-end her entire life.
STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (1951) In Alfred Hitchcock’s slinky, ingenious thriller, two strangers (Farley Granger, Robert Walker) meet on a train and concoct the perfect murder plot: they will each kill someone for the other, leaving no connection between perpetrator and victim. Danny De Vito hilariously reworked the concept into a comedy with 1987’s uproarious Throw Momma From The Train.
THE TRAIN (1964) In a typically taut effort from tension master John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate, Ronin), Burt Lancaster plays a WW2 French Resistance fighter desperately trying to safely stop and unload a fast paced train that a ruthless Nazi colonel (Paul Scofield) has packed with stolen French art treasures and sent hurtling to Germany.
TRAIN TO BUSAN (2016) An absolute action belter from Korean director Sang-ho Yeon (The King Of Pigs), Train To Busan sees a group of average, everyday commuters trying to survive the train ride from Seoul to Busan as a zombie virus rages dangerously around them. The zombie genre may have been flogged mercilessly in the last decade, but this is a must-see.
ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968) Though it’s about many, many things, Sergio Leone’s epic 1968 spaghetti western masterpiece is largely about the destructive, corrupting trail left by the railway as it cut an ugly swathe through the American west, creating civilisation, connection and community, but also ruining small towns and taking corporate malfeasance to a new level.
THE WARRIORS (1979) Walter Hill’s street gang masterpiece is best remembered for its colourfully attired and wonderfully menacing hoodlum crews, but it’s also one of the best train movies ever made, as its eponymous gang of misfits ride the New York subway while desperately trying to avoid the rival gangs that want them dead for a murder that they didn’t commit.
THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1-2-3 (1974) Ignore the horrendous 2009 remake with John Travolta: this is the real deal. Filled with authentic New York character actors, director Joseph Sargent ratchets up the tension brilliantly as four armed men (led by the great Robert Shaw) hold the passengers of a subway train hostage, while transit cop Walter Matthau tries to derail the plot.
THE POLAR EXPRESS (2004) Adapted from Chris Van Allsberg’s much loved children’s book and boasting cutting edge animation techniques (well, for 2004 at least), Robert Zemeckis’ charmer about a young boy who heads to The North Pole on Christmas Eve aboard a mystical, magical train watched over by Tom Hanks is an enjoyable and unfairly forgotten family flick.
FESTIVAL EXPRESS (2003) This wonderfully vibrant doco tracks the 1970 train tour across Canada taken by some of the era’s most popular rock bands, including the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, The Band, Buddy Guy, Flying Burrito Bros, Ian & Sylvia’s Great Speckled Bird, and Delaney & Bonnie & Friends. The footage of the bands hanging out and rehearsing on the train is truly priceless.
THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN (2016) Emily Blunt is brilliant (Oscar nomination-worthy brilliant, in fact…robbed!) in this uncompromising adaptation of Paula Hawkins’ chick-lit sensation, in which a put upon suburban wife glimpses the lives of others on her regular train commute, which sends her spiralling down a rabbit hole of murder, abuse and suspicion.
LAST TRAIN TO FREO (2006) Tense, claustrophobic, beautifully performed and floating on an undercurrent of rich social commentary, the Aussie drama Last Train To Freo (Jeremy Sims’ directorial debut) unfolds completely on a train, as two ex-cons (Tom Budge, Steve Le Marquand) tangle with a beautiful young law student (Gigi Edgley).
TRACKS (1976) In this typically oddball drama from writer/director Henry Jaglom (A Safe Place), Dennis Hopper plays a soldier who returns from Vietnam, and is charged with accompanying the body of his friend by train to California for burial. Crazed in tone and deliriously loose in style, the totally train-bound Tracks is far more unconventional than it sounds.
TOUGH GUYS (1986) In a fitting tribute to every train robbery movie ever made, the forgotten gem Tough Guys stars movie legends Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster (and The Red Hot Chili Peppers in a now hilarious cameo) as two aged but still badass career criminals who get released from prison into a world that they no longer understand, and decide to get their grounding by robbing a train.
SNOWPIERCER (2013) Director Bong Joon Ho (Parasite, The Host) takes the train movie to its delirious end point with this wacked out dystopian miasma in which the climate-destroyed world’s last remaining denizens fight to survive on an endlessly tracking train with carriages divided distinctly and violently by a brutal class system.
Railway Heroes is released in cinemas on November 19.
I was hoping to see Warm Nights on a Slow Moving Train in this list. A largely forgotten film directed by Bob Ellis, it starred Wendy Hughes, Colin Friels and Norman Kaye, and was nominated for an AACTA Award for Best Cinematography. Bob Ellis also wrote the screenplay with Denny Lawrence. They wrote so well together for Goodbye Paradise.