February 2, 2011: Unstoppable
I watched Unstoppable, technically, because of its Oscar nomination for Sound Editing, but I was interested in seeing it before that nomination forced my hand. On the surface it was likely to be simply another hyperactive and overwrought Tony Scott action film, but it reviewed well during its theatrical run and did fairly well at the box office. The film, extremely loosely based on real events, is about an out of control train running through urban areas and the courageous actions which brought it to a halt. I wouldn’t call this a great film by any measure, but it was entertaining and it was loud, and that’s what I was looking for.
The stage is set with the standard character setups, with union-based tension between the old-time freight train conductors who are being laid off to make way for younger and cheaper newcomers. Denzel Washington is one of the grizzled veterans and Chris Pine is a young fellow who seems to have come into the profession by way of inside connections and intergenerational family guilt. Washington, unlike the other long-time employees, gives Pine the benefit of the doubt, which turns out to be a good thing since the two of them are then paired up to drive a train together on that fateful day. Lazy rule-breaking in the freight yard leads to a train with no driver accelerating along a heavily used track between busy cities, and as it gains speed and a few close calls are avoided, the administration tries to decide how to handle this uncontrolled and unstoppable train, which of course happens to be carrying hazardous chemicals as part of its load.
All of the standard players are here. There’s the bureaucrat who’s so far removed from the reality of driving trains that he decides not to derail the train in a safe area because of the potential loss of money. There’s the plucky female dispatch operator, played here by the always wonderful Rosario Dawson, who knows the right decisions and pushes for them to be made, but is powerless to enact them unless she puts her own job at risk. There’s the egghead regulator guy who happens to be visiting the dispatch office that day for an inspection, and he has thoughts about how to stop the train but nobody listens to him because he’s only talking theory and hasn’t done the dirty work of actually driving trains (I’ll give you one guess as to whether or not his suggestions turn out to be right). There’s the train full of schoolchildren learning about how great rail travel is, who miss being plowed down by the unstoppable train by a margin of about 4 feet. There’s the recently-estranged wife of Chris Pine, who has a restraining order against him but gets caught up in the drama of his heroics and is right there waiting for him when he emerges successfully from stopping the renegade train. Unstoppable is “inspired by true events”, not even “based” on them, and it’s easy to see that some artistic license has been taken here.
Still, this is an engaging action premise about men and their big toys, with a freight train doing a side wheelie as it goes too fast around a critical bend on an elevated track in the middle of a city, and the heavy bass rumbling as trains attach to one another and rumble down the track is exactly what Tony Scott is known for bringing to life. My only serious problem with the film is that the impression of speed is not really achieved. I know that obviously the real movie trains aren’t travelling as fast as they purportedly are in the story, but usually fast and careful editing can fix that, and I’m surprised that it didn’t. I could also have done without the silly sentimentality at the end, but it’s inescapable in a movie like this, so I have to let it go. Unstoppable is good popcorn entertainment, nothing too high-brow, and pretty much delivers on what it promises.
Just prototypical modern-day Tony Scott fare.
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