The train is an underused vehicle in the action-thriller. We’ve seen bomb-laden buses careen through city streets, hijacked subway cars, snakes on planes, an entire franchise devoted to furiously fast cars, and even a rampaging cruise ship in Speed 2: Cruise Control. But the genre rarely rides the rails, despite a train’s unmatched power. After all, when the train must stick to a pre-determined path, how much suspense can there be?
Yet action-thrillers are not an underused vehicle for Denzel Washington, who we last saw kicking post-apocalyptic behind in The Book of Eli and thwarting a cackling John Travolta in the remake of The Taking of Pelham 123. Now here he is again as train engineer Frank Barnes in Unstoppable, understated as usual, a graying everyman thrust into an impossible situation with only his remarkably spotless teeth to aid him. And with director Tony Scott in the co-pilot chair, Unstoppable is a solid ride.
Unstoppable follows (literally) an out of control unmanned locomotive as it speeds down the tracks with a deadly toxic payload in tow. Washington’s engineer finds himself staring down the speeding freight train, and races off to tame the rampaging beast with train conductor Will Colson, played by Chris Pine, in tow. Pine is given more than just the usual sidekick role, but he spends most of the movie hunched in the shadow of Washington’s experience. Unlike the fresh-faced Pine, Washington has become the master of this down-to-earth archetype, right down to the artfully-timed straight shooting quips, and Unstoppable is more than ready to let him take the wheel to chase down the rogue train. Washington flashes a smile that could charm the Devil, and chuckles to his own jokes. It’s impossible not to root for the cheeky bastard, and even the stiff Pine loosens in his presence.
But its the devilish train “Triple Seven” which eventually overshadows Pine’s character and becomes one of the more well-rounded personalities in the film as Unstoppable slowly picks up speed out of the station. Though a sleazy office executive plays a brief role as evil-doer-du-jour, “Triple Seven” is the real antagonist. The train first shows its apparent malicious sentience after a switch on board mysteriously tumbles into position, allowing the freight to coast away from the yard alone. From there “Triple Seven” gleefully rampages through rural Pennslyvania; it transforms from mere metal to charging bull, fuming and roaring down the tracks, knocking anything in its path aside like a ferocious toddler set loose in a world made of Lincoln Logs.
Unstoppable director Tony Scott clearly recognizes the limitations of the plot, and understands perhaps better than any other director in Hollywood today how to make a good “bad” movie. The common tropes of the genre are not avoided, but lauded and winked at. Scott makes his characters “flawed” in the Hollywood style by way of brief, easily digestible exposition accompanied by a twinkling piano score; only in Hollywood could a character’s restraining order be spun into a positive, and only Scott can pull it off with enough humor and fun to make the cliches worthwhile. He shows a steady hand in building tension with something so linear as a runaway train. One would think a safe bet would just be to stay away from the rails, so Scott brings the tracks through a small city, making the last hour of the film a breathless race to the finish.
Scott is a skilled craftsman in the action genre, and it’s only when Unstoppable steps away from the thundering train that the considerable tension and pulsing tempo of the film begins to derail. Scott here seems obsessed with the cut-away shot to faked news footage. The first time, the campy acting of the reporter draws a few laughs. But by the end of the film, the camera darts back and forth between our tense heroes and a group of disinterested and dull ambulance chasers who flash phony graphics on the screen à la CNN. It’s as though Scott doesn’t trust the audience enough to keep their eyes on the action for more than a few moments, and needs to bring us back hundreds of feet to the safety of a television studio to explain away the complexities of holy-crap-the-train-will-crash. One particular scene at the films end is particularly guilty of this, as the action jumps back and forth from a teetering train and helicopter footage taken from the news chopper ahead.
Yet these are small stumbles in what is otherwise a well-crafted B movie carried by Washington’s patented small-town modesty. Thank god for those pearly whites.
Unstoppable is nothing more than popcorn-munching fare, but it’s enjoyable to the last kernel: B+
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