Unstoppable

Review: Unstoppable (12A)

Director: Tony Scott

Cast: Denzel Washington, Chris Pine

Speed was a bomb on a bus. Speed 2 was a bomb on a boat. Speed was brilliant. Speed 2 was not. Proof then that not all types of transportation system, heading at speed toward inevitable annihilation, provide good entertainment. Buses are cinematically dynamic, with all sorts of potential hurdles and obstacles to overcome. Boats have very little to disturb momentum, bar the occasional iceberg or porpoise.

Unstoppable finds itself somewhere in between these two poles. The inevitable difficulties of leaves on the track or poor timetabling aside, there are few dramatic incidences that can happen to a train. That is, unless you are Tony Scott. Director of Top Gun (plane), Days of Thunder (car), Crimson Tide (submarine) and Domino (Kiera Knightley), Scott is something of an expert in getting performances out of inanimate objects. Based loosely on a true story, Unstoppable is a surprisingly tense experience, centering on the actions of two railyard workers (Washington and Pine) who attempt to stop a runaway train carrying explosive chemicals from derailing in a highly populated area.

Leaving the actions of the heroic leads aside, Unstoppable is an ode to cliched stupidity; arrogant network bosses refusing to listen to logic in order to maintain the bottom line; Pennsylvanian police attempting to save the day by shooting at the train's stop button; and worst of all the runaway train is not a result of some terrorist attack, but rather the careless actions of a mindless redneck!

The action moves at a fair pace, despite the ridiculous stuttering effect of using news reports to provide entirely unnecessary exposition (Denzel - "I'm going to try and couple the trains", New Report - "It would appear he is going to try to couple the trains"!). While there is no question of Scott's ability to entertain and set up an action set piece, the film does run out of steam (sorry) by the final third and dies with more of a whimper than a bark.

Rating: 6/10