Review:
Unstoppable

Unstoppable is, like so many other movies, a film based on true events. Or ‘inspired’, as that should read, as the phrase ‘based on’ implies at least a knowing wink towards reality. This cinematic account of the real-life CSX-8888 incident could only be less based on reality if Godzilla wandered across the screen.

Frank Barnes (Denzel Washington) is a veteran freight train driver with two daughters who work in Hooters to pay for their college tuition. His new partner is young upstart Will Colson (Chris Pine), a man barely out of training, with a soon-to-be-ex-wife and a restraining order against him. Their relatively easy day soon turns into anything but after a series of unfortunate mishaps at a train yard leaves a half-mile-long freighter rattling along the tracks at seventy miles per hour, carrying several containers of toxic chemicals. As if that couldn’t be any worse (cue ‘wah-wah-waaaah’ sound effect), Frank, Will, a train full of children and Pittsburgh are all in the way of the runaway locomotive.

On paper (and for most of its screen time), there’s nothing instinctively wrong with Unstoppable. It’s a decent enough idea for an action-packed chase movie. Unfortunately, if you start to pick at it, everything unravels. Question one: who is the main antagonist of the movie? In the absence of a moustache-twiddling Dennis Hopper-alike, writer Mark Bomback (Die Hard 4.0) has opted to instead give us an uncaring executive who would rather kill hundreds of people than risk lowering his stock options. When a villain in an action flick is a fat man in a tie and not the opposing force to the protagonist, you know something’s wrong.

Question two: why do two men decide to risk life and limb on a hunch that they could stop it? Frank is depicted as a kind, if absentminded, father, who cares deeply about his two daughters and loves them very much. Will is shown to be secretly making sure his wife and son are okay. If that’s true and they are committed family men, then why in the hell do they even bother to make the only plausible attempt to stop the train? Just shrugging and saying, ‘they’re brave’ doesn’t count as motivation. There’s nothing on offer here that can disguise the huge lack of character depth. Question three: do you remember hearing about that huge train crash in 2001 where a runaway engine tore into a city and killed hundreds? You don’t? Ah, in that case, you probably know how this film ends.