It stars Gene Hackman and Anne Archer, with James B. Sikking, Nigel Bennett, Harris Yulin and J. T. Walsh in supporting roles.

[6] The film keeps the same general story, and follows a Los Angeles deputy district attorney who attempts to keep a murder witness safe from hitmen while traveling on a train.

[7] In Los Angeles, divorced editor Carol Hunnicut is on a blind date at a hotel restaurant with widowed lawyer Michael Tarlow, when a waiter delivers a message for him to phone a client.

While Hunnicut watches from a darkened room, the client, crime boss Leo Watts, unexpectedly arrives in person along with a gunman, Jack Wootton.

Caulfield entrusts Weller to Keller's protection and asks him to use his police radio to inform the authorities of Dahlbeck's betrayal, but he is shot dead before making the call.

[4] Due to the lesser popularity of rail travel in the late 1980s, the story was relocated to the Canadian wilderness to justify the lack of alternative transport options, and to make getting off the train appear like a riskier proposition.

The Mexican desert was also considered, but due to the passengers' demographics, it was deemed implausible that Archer and Hackman's characters would be able to remain hidden among them for long.

[4] A New York Times article outsourced to Vancouver Sun writer Moira Farrow relayed the filmmakers' opinion that "[t]he title Narrow Margin is all that's left of the original movie.

"[3] The manner in which they distanced themselves from the original drew the ire of its director Richard Fleischer, who penned a rebuke to the Times, pointing to the similarities between Hyams' pitch and the film he had made.

[13][14] Co-star Anne Archer found herself available for this film after opting out of a previously scheduled project, the erotic thriller Wild Orchid.

[15] Susan Hogan was selected based on her role on the Canadian-filmed series Night Heat, of which director Peter Hyams was a fan.

[18] Some train interiors were also recreated on a set built inside a warehouse on Vancouver's Euclid Avenue, and mounted on an inflatable platform to create the appropriate swaying motions.

That part took three weeks to capture, and could only be filmed a couple hours at a time due to the impossibility of diverting the area's regularly scheduled traffic.

Owen Gleiberman gave the film a middling C. He called it "a thinly scripted procession of train-movie clichés", unfavorably comparing it to Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes, but commended Hyams' for the real actors' seamless integration into the dangerous train-top finale.

[33] Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times faulted the film for lacking "any sense of richness of character" although she was impressed by the final sequence and Archer's involvement in it.

[34] Chris Hicks of the Deseret News lauded Peter Hyams' "skill as a director of action sequences" and, like Gleiberman, applauded the absence of stunt doubles in some of the finale's best moments.

[36] Peter Stack of the San Francisco Chronicle was more accommodating, writing that "Narrow Margin has a couple of moments of unabashed hokeyness and some predictable turns of plot, but considering that it's designed to do nothing more than provide escapist fare for 97 minutes, and that there are a dozen surprise twists, it hardly seems to matter.

"[37] Tom Tunney of Empire called the film a "sometimes witty time-filler" with a "well handled finale", although he did not think it lived up to the original's "genuine sense of confined menace".

[2] Brian Wester of Apollo Movie Guide praised "a sharp and concise script and a solid performance by Hackman and his supporting players".

He praised "the skill of Hyams' filmmaking" as well as his efforts to give Hackman "a range of tones to play", contrasting with his harder edged characters such as Popeye Doyle.

[44] Matthew Hartman of High Def Digest agreed, saying "With only a few stumbles, Narrow Margin holds up well to repeat viewings even after a number of the great twists and turns have been exposed.

[6] Svet Atanasov of Blu-ray.com praised its "truly relentless tempo", marred only by "sporadic splashes of light humor that feel entirely unnecessary", concluding that it was "an otherwise outstanding film".