Unstoppable
{4.5/5} “Hey, don’t get sentimental on me. Makes me think I’m gonna die.”
There’s a runaway train going at 70 miles per hour and it’s going to derail when it hits a curve in a large Pennsylvania town. Along with fuel, it’s carrying several cars of toxic chemicals. The only people who can stop it are Frank and Will, train engineers who were driving their train in the opposite direction. They decide that the town’s only chance is for them to drive their train backwards, catch up to the runaway train, and put on the brakes.
Unstoppable was released in 2010.
In case you think this is implausible, it’s actually based on a true story (known as the CSX 8888 incident). Of course, the story has been made more exciting for the movie.
It’s an action movie with no bad guys. As one of the characters says, the situation was caused by “a combination of human error and bad luck.”
I’m guessing that train companies were ambivalent about this movie. On the one hand, train company personnel are shown to be knowledgeable and heroic. On the other hand, other personnel are shown to be incompetent and inflexible.
It’s an exciting movie. I liked the main characters — Frank is a 28-year veteran of the train company, who knows everything about trains and lost his wife to cancer a few years ago. Will is a newcomer to the industry, and is currently estraged from his wife.
Some of the editing was a bit over the top, but perhaps no more so than lots of current movies where there’s a cut every few seconds.
Harry Gregson-Williams (Chicken Run) provides standard action-movie music.
Denzel Washington (Inside Man) plays Frank and Chris Pine (Captain Kirk in the new Star Trek) plays Will. Rosario Dawson (Clerks II) plays Connie, their supervisor.
The movie was directed by Tony Scott (Deja Vu).
January 7th, 2013 at 2:02 pm
We saw this movie recently, and were pleasantly surprised! A nice build of tension, and lots of solid moments. Not the world’s greatest piece of art, but very watchable and edge of seat.