Unstoppable film review
Unstoppable is the latest (and fifth) action movie teaming of director Tony Scott and leading man Denzel Washington, after Crimson Tide, Man on Fire, Déjà Vu and that other recent train movie, The Taking of Pelham 123. Unstoppable is a solid genre entry, offering an entertaining, engaging and occasionally very exciting two hours. However, it probably won’t meet everyone’s expectations. If you enter the cinema expecting rip-roaring ridiculousness like Speed – with big explosions and trains, not buses, ramping gaps on the track – you will be disappointed. Loosely based on real-life events, Unstoppable keeps things surprisingly subdued and true to reality.
Unstoppable is set in Pennsylvania and centres on a massive, chemical laden freight train that through a combination of human error and bad luck is set to full throttle, and begins barrelling towards the well populated town of Stanton. While the authorities debate how to stop the train, engineer Frank Barnes (Washington) and conductor Will Colson (Chris Pine) decide to defy orders, put their differences aside and take action before it’s too late. They’re assisted remotely by yardmaster Connie Hooper (Rosario Dawson), and the most loyal members of her team.
Unstoppable is basically a tale celebrating blue-collar heroes – who, despite a host of personal problems, still summon the courage to save the day, even at great risk to themselves. While the train is a deadly unstoppable force, it’s faceless. The real villains of the film are clearly the profit-obsessed corporates in their glass and steel towers, weighing up solutions against their impact on stock prices. Washington, Pine and Dawson are all likeable, charismatic performers and it’s easy for the audience to get behind them.
The problem with Unstoppable though is that the action involves a train. And trains can’t go anywhere unexpected. Or do anything unexpected. They’re confined to a single strip of track. Right from the outset, officials realise the chief threat is that at full speed the train will derail at a very tight, elevated corner in Stanton. This means that the unpredictability aspect of Unstoppable is very low. This isn’t to say that there aren’t several genuinely exciting moments – stemming from collisions and collision close calls – in the movie.
As for Scott’s signature hyper-edited camerawork, it actually works for the most part in Unstoppable. The swirling cinematography, combined with simulated news crew footage, really helps to make the speeding train scenes more dynamic and visually exhilarating. Scott can’t however resist applying the same style to the many phone conversations that take place in the film. And here it’s noticeably silly, dizzying and very annoying.
Unstoppable is a definite case of miss AND hit. I’m inclined to still put the film in the “hit” category though, given the slickness of the production. When the adrenaline does spike, it’s undeniably potent stuff, and that’s always the most important thing in an action movie.
Unstoppable is set in Pennsylvania and centres on a massive, chemical laden freight train that through a combination of human error and bad luck is set to full throttle, and begins barrelling towards the well populated town of Stanton. While the authorities debate how to stop the train, engineer Frank Barnes (Washington) and conductor Will Colson (Chris Pine) decide to defy orders, put their differences aside and take action before it’s too late. They’re assisted remotely by yardmaster Connie Hooper (Rosario Dawson), and the most loyal members of her team.
Unstoppable is basically a tale celebrating blue-collar heroes – who, despite a host of personal problems, still summon the courage to save the day, even at great risk to themselves. While the train is a deadly unstoppable force, it’s faceless. The real villains of the film are clearly the profit-obsessed corporates in their glass and steel towers, weighing up solutions against their impact on stock prices. Washington, Pine and Dawson are all likeable, charismatic performers and it’s easy for the audience to get behind them.
The problem with Unstoppable though is that the action involves a train. And trains can’t go anywhere unexpected. Or do anything unexpected. They’re confined to a single strip of track. Right from the outset, officials realise the chief threat is that at full speed the train will derail at a very tight, elevated corner in Stanton. This means that the unpredictability aspect of Unstoppable is very low. This isn’t to say that there aren’t several genuinely exciting moments – stemming from collisions and collision close calls – in the movie.
As for Scott’s signature hyper-edited camerawork, it actually works for the most part in Unstoppable. The swirling cinematography, combined with simulated news crew footage, really helps to make the speeding train scenes more dynamic and visually exhilarating. Scott can’t however resist applying the same style to the many phone conversations that take place in the film. And here it’s noticeably silly, dizzying and very annoying.
Unstoppable is a definite case of miss AND hit. I’m inclined to still put the film in the “hit” category though, given the slickness of the production. When the adrenaline does spike, it’s undeniably potent stuff, and that’s always the most important thing in an action movie.
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