Grade: B+
It’s hard to imagine that a movie about a runaway train set to explode could feature some of the most sincere respect for the blue-collar working class of recession-era America, but somehow, Tony Scott’s “Unstoppable” does just that and more.
Scott is a filmmaker who thrives when he runs counter to the cinematic norm; he’s a guy who directs with the sort of intensity that sometimes seems to threaten the very fabric of the films he seems to care about so much.
With 2004’s “Man on Fire,” Scott found his muse in Denzel Washington, an actor whose own intensity runs similar to Scott’s in its consistency in each film. For the two of them to have made last year’s cripplingly typical “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3,” I sadly wondered whether the intensity they’d harnessed so well ever since 1996’s “Crimson Tide” had finally run its course.
“Unstoppable,” though, sees Scott and Washington taking the reigns again in full force and bringing us an effort that’s as much a product of impeccable action filmmaking as it is a tribute to the resilient American working class.
Our first look into Scott’s world is in an eastern Pennsylvania factory town riddled with economic woe. Scott has a real talent for making the cities his films take place in as much a character as any speaking role, most notably in his and Washington’s 2006’s post-Katrina “Déjà Vu.” Here is no different, as the town is filmed in the sorts of melancholic greens and grays that reflect the atmosphere.
We meet Washington’s character Frank early on, a veteran of working the interstate railroads, where he’s stuck teaching Chris Pine’s character Will the ropes of railroad work. What happens from here? Somehow, someway a train gets loose from the loading yard, and that train just so happens to be half a mile long and carrying enough hazardous cargo to make it, as one character says, “a missile the size of the Chrysler building.”
Yeah, “Unstoppable” is a movie about a runaway train headed for a crowded city, and Frank and Will are the only ones who can stop it. But guess what? It rocks the entire time. It is everything you could want out of a big dumb action movie done by a director whose skills would seem to warrant material more high brow than this. Instead, “Unstoppable” becomes a series of dares that Scott throws out to the audience; he’s got exploding barrels and bridges, trains full of innocent children heading for the same direction and an entire car full of corn aimed right at the guys trying to save an entire city.
“Unstoppable” finds that Zen-like balance between the stupid and the brilliant, the fun and the drama. Washington plays his usual “Denzel” self, but he’s having fun this time, and his hero is believable as an average guy trying to do some good for the world. Chris Pine, in his first real vehicle since 2009’s “Star Trek,” seems to play a more brooding version of Captain Kirk, but he has some real chemistry with Washington throughout.
One of the great departures for “Unstoppable” is that the bad guys aren’t some terrorists trying to hijack the train, but the corporate owners of the railroad line who make their decisions around stock figures and investor opinion rather than saving lives. It’s obvious, but “Unstoppable” is a movie for the every-day American, featuring two unlikely rough-around-the-edges heroes who have their own battles to fight at home.
That’s why “Unstoppable” is great, though. Tony Scott can direct action, but if the stories behind the characters don’t matter then all the great action in the world won’t save the film. Here, unlike in “Pelham,” Scott’s characters grow before any real action takes place — he lets the train come to the characters, not vice versa, and in turn he creates a film that’s as fun as it is sincere.
“Unstoppable” is a non-stop thrill ride that takes the high road in developing its story and characters before laying a lens on the action, but in turn that dynamic fosters a film that’s unique and more exciting than any other big-budget action movie you’re likely to see this year.
Contact the critic at vburnton@asu.edu
