Movies are just like books, people, activities, studies… as one grows older your tastes become more defined and it is increasingly harder to watch a specific genre you may not relate to. With that in mind I hesitantly switched on Unstoppable, Tony Scott’s latest huge hit and blue collar action packed thriller.Top Gun was probably one of his last directorial stints I had enjoyed and since then, had always preferred his brother Ridley Scott’s more sensitive, creative and often less action focused features (Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma And Louise, Kingdom Of Heaven, Robin Hood).
Armed with coffee and munchies, I sat to watch 99 minutes of pure adrenaline about a runaway train carrying 80,000 gallons of molten phenol (phenol, molten is the white crystalline solid shipped at an elevated temperature to form a semi-solid. It is very hot and may cause burns from contact and also may cause the ignition of combustible materials), traveling at high speed simply due to the lack of professionalism of one of the hostlers, the well named Dewey (Ethan Suplee).
At the very same moment an excursion train carrying little school children departs from the Allegheny and West Virginia Railroad (AWVR). Meanwhile Will Colson played by Chris Pine who smartly ditched Captain Kirk’s outfits and stayed away from all super hero spandex costumes, begins to work as a conductor for AWVR and is partnered with Franck Barnes (Denzel Washington) a veteran engineer with 28 years of experience. It becomes obvious, very quickly, that Colson has some serious personal issues. He is jumpy, unshaven, gets too many phone calls from his brother about “restraining orders” “court cases”…. etc.
The scene is set: High speed train carrying dangerous material, innocent little children in another train, rookie conductor with emotional issues and wise good man to keep everyone going. Déjà vu? Most certainly!
Actually the main issue of this film is that the dynamics between the two main characters have hardly been explored. It is good that they are not at each other’s throats, which would have been an extremely cliché and predictable reaction; but something is lacking, perhaps due to time constraints or the director’s desire to keep the movie purely only about muscle, adrenaline, action and as little psychology as possible.
Strange though since both these men decide to put their lives on line to stop the runaway train. They have a lot to live for and yet are ready to sacrifice it all; true indeed to avert a worse catastrophy, but anyway such a huge decision is taken in a split second with the usual action movie line: “Let’s do this”!
The nice touch to the film is that the yardmaster, Connie Hooper, is played by the lovely Rosario Dawson on whom everyone relies to prevent a deadly accident. Connie suggests to her superior Oscar Galvin to derail the train in a lightly populated farmland but Galvin vetoes her idea because it would cost the company too much to replace the locomotives (as opposed to probably killing thousands in a small town).
Shall not reveal the ending, but to non action crazy fans, I would really suggest watching Unstoppable on a big screen as some of the train sequences may seem a little long if viewed on a regular television. Thumbs up to the cast, the well established ones Denzel Washington and Rosario Dawson are their excellent self and Chris Pine who is relatively new in the business probably has a good agent who has advised him to vary his roles which can only display the extent of his talent without over focusing on his physique. On the whole, Unstoppable isn’t a bad film and totally serves its purpose of being good pop corn entertainment.
The Sunday Leader - By Sumaya Samarasinghe
