Unstoppable: A Runaway Train of Frustration

Unstoppable Review

Tony Scott and Denzel Washington have worked together on several films now including the great “Man on Fire” their first collaboration. Since then they have worked together on “Deja Vu”, “The Taking of Pelham 123” and now “Unstoppable”. After “Man on Fire” each of Scott’s successive films have seemed to degrade in quality, but “Unstoppable” marks a slight step up in quality.

The film is based on a real runaway train in Northwest Ohio in 2001. The real life conductor Terry Forson and engineer Jess Knowlton were credited with saving thousands of lives that day. In the film, Frank (Denzel Washington) and Will (Chris Pine) must race against time stop the runaway train and save lives.

The structure of the film is really simple two guys who don’t like each other must work together to stop the train and in the process become buddies. The film tries to make this simple storyline as interesting as possible, but the simplicity of the story also works against it. Nothing in the film hasn’t been done better in other films like “Speed”.

The problems with “Unstoppable” outshine what the film does right. First, the actors do as much as they can with the terrible script. Almost every line spoken in the film is cliche or drenched in cheese. A line in the trailer, “We’re not just talking about a train...we’re talking about a missile the size of the Chrysler Building!”, is but one of the lines oozing cheese that you will hear the characters say in complete seriousness.

A major problem with the film is the ending. Since “Unstoppable” was based on true events the ending of the film doesn’t change what happens, but that isn’t a problem plenty of films have been able to be captivating even though everyone knows the outcome like  the recent “127 Hours”. No, the problem with the ending is that all of the events of the film are worthless after the arrival of someone that helps to stop the train. That person could have shown up at the beginning of the film and the train would have been stopped before anyone was put into danger.

A scene that really shows the stupidity of the film is when a line of police officers literally shoot at the train to try and stop it. They stop only when they realize that they have been shooting near the fuel tanks. No one could have let them know ahead of time where the fuel tanks are? No one realized that shooting at the train is a bad idea? No one realized how stupid this movie is?

How the film is shot is also a problem. Scott’s style of shooting has worked in some of his other films like “Enemy of the State”, but here he feels the need to gussy up every dialogue scene with the most dynamic shots possible. The camera never just sits still and lets the actors work. The shots become annoying and Scott seems to run out of ideas halfway through. He then uses the same rapid spinning shots and helicopter shots over and over.

“Unstoppable” is better than Scott’s other recent train centered film, “The Taking of Pelham 123”, but fails to really capture what made his earlier works great. Let’s just hope that Scott doesn’t feel the need to center another movie on trains, at least for awhile.