Cinema Verdict Review: Unstoppable

Unstoppable

OPENING: 11/13/2010

STUDIO: 20th Century Fox

RUN TIME: 98 min

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
1,000,000 tons. 100,000 lives. 100 minutes.

Opening Statement
Unstoppable moves fast, and talks quick, but fails to do anything even remotely interesting. Credit director Tony Scott for making us believe this story contains genuine thrills. Really it’s about two men enjoying a pleasant train ride through the “undignified” heart of Middle America.

Facts of the Case
Scott’s film opens with–dare I say it? Trains. We watch as engineers and conductors move in and out of busy train yards in remote Pennsylvania; flipping switches, moving industrial items, and preparing for a new day.

Denzel Washington plays Frank, a square-jawed train engineer if there ever was one. Frank and his buddies have worked the track for 20-some odd years. They’re not legends; in fact most of them received pink slips long ago. Frank must partner up with newbie engineer Will (Chris Pine), who the men despise for taking over their jobs–the train corporation wants young blood because they’re cheap.

Frank and Will head off to work, just like any other day. Little dialogue exchanges between the two; Frank calls Will “Junior,” Will thinks Frank hails from a “retirement home.” Disdain creates the basis of this awkward partnership. But Frank remains good at his job, having driven trains for much of his life, and derisively instructs Will in the art of train conducting, offering up marital advice as a bonus.

Both Frank and Will, you see, are troubled characters with problematic personal lives. Will’s wife has a restraining order against him; Frank’s daughters work at Hooters and want nothing to do with their father. Frank and Will’s characters seek redemption. As luck would have it, this day creates the perfect opportunity for just that.

A runaway train carrying several carts worth of toxic chemicals has broken free of its conductors and barrels mercilessly down the tracks, destroying everything in its path. Attempts to stop the train prove unsuccessful, and it’s only a matter of time before Frank and Will must set aside personal issues and risk life and limb to stop the relentless missile.

The Evidence
Unstoppable happily sets its “true life” tale in one those cinema-only worlds where everyone acts either foolishly or ineptly. Such a universe affords directors like Tony Scott the opportunity to show off illogical action and violence much to the pleasure of its adrenaline seeking audience. After all, what says dramatic tension better than inexplicable explosions and wild car chases?

Consider a scene in which a cop attempts to move his squad car away from the railroad tracks. Of course, he cannot start the engine; much to the dismay of the row of cars lined up carefully behind him. As the train roars by, the vehicles are pummeled with debris from the device some equally dimwitted men had laid on the tracks moments earlier in an attempt to derail the locomotive. Now, why in the hell would a patrolman park his car so close to the tracks in the first place, especially considering all that happened before, and knowing all that will happen momentarily? Because if he didn’t, there would exist no action in the film to satisfy the Die Hard crowd, and they are needed to cover the reported $100 million-plus budget.

Unstoppable drenches itself with all the markings of other hackneyed actioners–Jan De Bont’s Speed comes to mind–replete with stereotypical characters– i.e. inane rednecks, fathers seeking redemption from past sins, corporate stooges and hapless cops–who do reckless things recklessly to keep the plot from stalling.

Things go boom–a lot–and trains whiz by at varying speeds, but none of it matters much. About 60 minutes into the production, for all of Unstoppable’s insanity-fueled cinematography and overbearing sound design, I realized nothing substantial had happened since the opening credits. Frank and Will talk and talk some more as Scott’s camera endlessly whirls around their profiles, but neither character says anything of value. Washington and Pine are typically electrifying actors, the latter having proved his worth in JJ Abram’s Star Trek, but here they mope and gripe, spewing out stale dialogue in-between shots of trains moving fast.

The rest of the cast, including Rosario Dawson (Seven Pounds), and Kevin Dunn (Transformers), pop in and provide the necessary explanations audiences need to understand the simple, if not contrived plot. I laughed when Kevin Corrigan (The Pineapple Express) introduced himself as a Safety Inspector, who then spent the rest of the film dropping important insights the remaining players more or less had no understanding of. I kept thinking, it’s a good thing he picked that particular day to carry out an inspection (such is the obviousness of the film).

By now Scott’s films, including the recent remake The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (also starring Washington), all follow a peculiar pattern. He no longer tells stories, but rather films movement. Here, he utilizes news cameras in key action moments, such as during a feeble attempt to stop the train by airdropping a hapless patrolman onto its roof. To what end do these news cameras function, other than to insert more static noise in the proceedings? It’s telling that once the patrolman fails miserably, news anchors cover the story in mawkish fashion.

That feeling of contemptuousness looms over the entire production; Scott takes sly jabs at American cultural, defining it in ignorant terms. When people in the film cheer at news images of heroes leaping atop trains from cart to cart, Scott drains the excitement by placing the onlookers in Hooters, amidst enormous screens of bikini-clad women. Such images invoke laughter, not patriotic fervor. The director’s intentions lie within a desire to portray Americans as oafish, shallow individuals–something he dabbled with in the overtly explicit Domino. By so doing, Scott dodges the silliness of Mark Bomback’s script and wraps a hammy noose around the neck of the film; he embraces the goofy action, and in the process throws a middle finger in the face those who’ve paid to see it.

Tony Scott’s best film came years ago in the form of Crimson Tide – an intelligent submarine thriller, that marked his first collaboration with Washington (the two would join forces for 2004’s Man on Fire and 2007’s Déjà Vu). That film boasted a care and devotion to character, along with a unique dissection of the pros and cons of rank and power. In Unstoppable, there exists an opportunity to explore the nature of heroism. Too bad Scott has lost interest in such ideas. He’d rather poke fun at them instead.

Closing Statement
Unstoppable may satisfy those seeking dumb action; those looking for intelligence, or something akin to character driven excitement need look elsewhere.

The Verdict
6/10