Unstoppable

Tony Scott's Unstoppable is a white knuckle thriller of the best kind. It wastes no time in setting up its central situation. A careless engineer (Ethan Suplee) gets out of the train he's controlling to set the track. He's certain that he's brought his train to a stop, but he has not, and it just keeps on gliding ahead at increasing speed. The now-unmanned runaway train is carrying dangerous chemicals, and is on a collision course for nearby populated areas. As Connie (Rosario Dawson), the woman at the control room who monitors all the trains in the local area, observes, it's essentially a missile on wheels the size of the Chrysler Building.

Enter our heroes - Barnes (Denzel Washington), the veteran engineer, and Colson (Chris Pine), the new guy on the job. There's a smattering of character development for the two. Barnes is a by-the-book kind of guy, who trusts his instincts, and is struggling to raise two teenage daughters on his own. Colson has family problems of his own, as a misunderstanding with his wife led to a hasty and stupid action on his part. Now he's fighting the restraining order placed against him so he can see his son again. Of course, none of this matters when the two find out about the runaway train speeding toward them on the track. The two decide to go against orders, and put a stop to the situation themselves.

From this point on, Tony Scott literally never lets up the tension, and the movie itself is all the better for it. We witness the situation from multiple viewpoints. Aside from Barnes and Colson, we also get to see Connie in the control room trying to keep order, an executive for the railroad company named Galvin (Kevin Dunn) looking out for the corporation over its employees, the innocent bystanders watching the events unfold, and "live footage" from the local media that gives the film a docu-drama feel, which fits, since the film is based on a real event. (Rather loosely based, I should add.) All of this is done with a surprising amount of restraint on Scott's part. As a director famous for his shaky hand-held camera shots and music video-style editing, he keeps things fairly standard here in terms of visual storytelling.

That being said, Unstoppable is a technically superb movie. A lot of the crashes and stunt work seem to be done mainly with physical effects and actors, rather than CG, giving the film a further sense of urgency and tension. When we see the runaway train barely miss a group of kids on a field trip, or plow through a vehicle stuck on the tracks, we are awed, because it's right up there on the screen. I also liked the way that the train is often shot at strange angles, making it appear larger than life. This also allows the roar of its engine to take on a life of its own, making it sound like a bellowing beast. Since the train itself is essentially the lead villainof the film (with Dunn's corporate head character filling in from time to time), these shots successfully make it come across as a force of destruction.

Since the film keeps things constantly moving, there's very little time for characterization, although I did grow fond of Dawson's Connie, who keeps a cool head through the whole situation. Washington and Pine also make a strong leading team, able to rise above their thinly written roles with their screen presence and chemistry. Really, they're a big part of what makes the film work so well. We like it when they come together to face their crisis, and we want to see them succeed. There's some brilliantly done nail-biting stuff near the end, as both men make individual efforts to leave their car, and stop the runaway train. Actually, considering that a majority of the film's second and third act is simply a chase across a straight piece of track, and the film still manages to make it more suspenseful than just about anything out there, that's a feat in itself.

Unstoppable is the kind of movie where you find yourself constantly clutching the armrest, or the arm of the person next to you, with each passing stunt and narrow escape. This is an ingeniously designed action thriller, the best of its kind to come along in a while. I can easily see this becoming a big crowd pleaser over the Thanksgiving weekend, and should prove to have staying power even beyond. This is one of the unexpected gems of 2010.

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