Starring: Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, Rosario Dawson
Directed By: Tony Scott
Written By: Mark Bomback
Produced By: Eric McLeod, Mimi Rogers, Tony Scott, Julie Yorn, Alex Young
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: Approximately 98 minutes
Website: unstoppablemovie.com
Budget: $100,000,000
Genre: Action
Release Date: November 12, 2010
On paper, Unstoppable sounds less like a big-budget action movie and more like a parody of the same. It involves an unmanned, potentially explosive-laden train hurtling toward an all-but-certain derailment near huge storage tanks of fuel oil in a densely populated area. In its path is an unsuspecting group of school children on a field trip. The hardened veteran (Denzel Washington) and his brash rookie partner (Star Trek’s Chris Pine) are the only ones that can stop the runaway train from blowing up school children, various Pennsylvanians, and presumably assorted orphans, nuns, and war widows.
It’s not the most original of premises, designed to shock – those school children aren’t nearly as major a plot point as trailers and the film’s first few minutes would lead you to believe – but in the case of Unstoppable, pedigree does count. While not as accomplished as his brother Ridley, director Tony Scott has established himself as a capable action director. It’s hard to create tension when much of your action movie involves technicians hitting track switches from computers hundreds of miles away, but Scott keeps things tense and building even when the brunt of the action hinges on a series of conference calls among executives. Scott zooms in on the worried faces of railroad employees, photographs hurtling trains with a genuine sense of urgency that implies these things could derail at any moment. It’s a testament to Scott’s skill as a director that a story about two trains chasing each other in a straight line qualifies as heart-pounding action.
It helps to have Denzel Washington in your corner. Washington, gradually lapsing into the Gene Hackman-Michael Caine territory of “Good in pretty much anything,” isn’t doing anything special with his performance here, but this is still Denzel Washington we’re talking about. To say his character, Frank, a skilled but embittered railroad vet, is a bit thinly written is an understatement. Likewise, Will (Pine), Frank’s partner for the day, is on the job due to family connections and a symbol of their company’s disinterest in old guard engineers like Frank. We’re given roughly two pieces of personal information about each of these men over the course of the movie – don’t you know we need to be invested in our heroes? – and the rest is full speed down the track.
Screenwriter Mark Bomback knows the audience isn’t here for Pine and Washington, though their adversarial-buddy routine keeps the proceedings lively. The hook is that train, loaded for bear, and the unspoken promise that stuff might get blowed up good. Bomback is the same guy who throws in the imperiled school children subplot, which fizzles out just after it’s had time to make the audience nervous. It’s a grand manipulation, like most of the film, and it defies all expectations by actually working. This is not a movie of ambiguity or anything approaching subtlety. It is a movie about rooting for the unlikely duo who have to put aside their differences and risk their lives to do the right thing, all tied up in a pretty bow where even their personal problems are solved by their act of heroism and/or stupidity. It’s as basic and slick as movies get, but sometimes that’s enough. Despite its laughably “Hollywood” premise, “inspired” by true events, Scott and his crew make Unstoppable an enjoyable piece of throwaway entertainment, destined for numerous airings on a basic cable channel near you in the near future.
Grade: 3 Stars
