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

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.

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.

Oscar-winner Voight (Coming Home) burrows deep into this messy, furious character and Roberts (King of the Gypsies, The Pope of Greenwich Village), still fairly new to the medium, matches him. Both have quite a few hilarious exchanges.