Film Review: 'Unstoppable'

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with director Tony Scott’s films. I appreciate some of his work, namely Man on Fire and Déjà Vu, but even those movies are brought down by Scott’s method of shooting his pictures. His jerky edits and distracting camerawork simply are not up to par with the often-excellent stories he tells.

Scott’s latest movie, Unstoppable, doesn’t do a whole lot to overcome these problems. That said, I enjoyed this movie more than I could’ve imagined. What we have here is not a deep thinking piece or a dramatic powerhouse; we instead have a balls-out thrill ride that strikes the perfect balance between character and white-knuckle action.

Frequent Scott collaborator Denzel Washington stars as Frank, a grizzled Pennsylvania train engineer who is tasked with training new employee Will, played by Chris Pine in his first major post Star Trek role. Elsewhere on the tracks, a series of blunders made by two other rail workers turns another train into an unmanned missile. Guess who gets to chase it down.

This may seem like just another runaway train movie, and in a lot of ways, that’s exactly what it is. One fact sets it apart, however: this is a good runaway train movie, made great by its simplicity. Aside from an inept corporate boss played by Kevin Dunn (Shia’s dad from Transformers), there really aren’t any true bad guys in Unstoppable. There’s no terrorist plot, no nuclear weapons onboard (though we do have some volatile chemicals, of course). Unstoppable is, purely and plainly, Denzel Washington and Chris Pine versus a train, with some help from a yardmaster played by Rosario Dawson.

Washington is, as usual, on his game here. His character’s personality and demeanor are very similar to those of many of the characters he has played, and that’s not a criticism. The guy is very fun to watch on screen, and that’s very important in a film like this.

The real story here is Pine. His performance isn’t exactly Oscar-worthy, but who cares? Unstoppable was his chance to prove his ability to play someone other than Captain Kirk. He does it very well, I’m happy to say.

Unstoppable is a very well-balanced film. Case in point: my favorite scene, in which Will tells Frank the story of his alienation from his wife. As Will tells the story, Frank is forced to interrupt several times to answer the radio. Each time, Will waits and then continues. All the while, we’re building up to a huge moment in the train chase. The scene is absolutely brilliant in the way it weaves the characters’ stories in with the looming disaster at hand. The entire film pulls this off very impressively, too. These backstories are important because they make us care, but Scott knows never to linger on them for too long. He always promptly gets back to the action, and trust me, there’s a lot of action to be seen here.

Unstoppable is a good, old-fashioned popcorn movie that deserves to be seen. Despite his annoying camerawork, director Tony Scott has produced his best film in years, with the help of some very good performances by Denzel Washington and Chris Pine. If you’re looking for a good summer movie to see in the fall, make it this one.