‘Solid’ is the word being used in the (mostly positive) reviews of Unstoppable. It’s a vindication of sorts for director Tony Scott who’s managed, just by sticking to the same style for 25 years, to go from being called flashy, hyperactive and a man making films for MTV attention spans – which is what people were saying around the time of Top Gun in 1986 – to being called ‘solid’. It’s even more gratifying (or surprising) because Scott can only make films in that particular style. There’s an epilogue in Unstoppable, after the danger has been averted and grateful bosses are pinning medals on our heroes – yet that epilogue is filmed exactly like the rest of it, the camera zipping around breathlessly just like it’s done in the preceding 90 minutes.
That said, I have no problem with ‘solid’. I watched Unstoppable almost back-to-back with Saw 3D, so I know coherent drama isn’t something we can take for granted. And there’s a welcome simplicity to the movie’s ‘monster’, a runaway train – sometimes filmed as though it were a monster, with CGI brush-strokes making it look almost like a living thing – which can only do one thing, viz. hurtle blindly down the tracks, destroying everything in its path. There’s no added hokum to the story (maybe because it’s based on a true story), no death or large-scale destruction; tension comes entirely from the situation – because the train’s carrying toxic chemicals and, if it isn’t stopped, will derail in a big city and wreak untold havoc.
Two men try to stop it, young conductor Chris Pine and veteran engineer Denzel Washington (whose air of certitude, accompanied by the famously withering Denzel Stare, is a thing of beauty) – though in fact their biggest problem isn’t the train but oafish bosses who hold them back, and even threaten to fire them if they play hero. There’s a working-class vibe, Management coming off badly (one senior executive spends the whole crisis on the golf course), and of course we get glimpses of the men’s family problems – Chris is estranged from his wife; widowed Denzel forgets his daughter’s birthday – as well as the early animosity between them. None of this cuts very deep, however. The focus is almost entirely on the train.
No-frills simplicity usually works in action films, but Unstoppable is slightly disappointing. Firstly, the situation doesn’t seem all that impossible: all it needs is for someone to get on the train – which is travelling at around 70 mph – and the brakes can be applied; you’d think one of the many helicopters on the scene (most of them belonging to news crews) could deposit a cop or railway employee on the roof. To be fair, the film shows this being attempted and failing – but there’s no reason why they can’t try again (after all, they know exactly where the train’s going to be). I suspect the truth – as in most ‘true stories’ – is that the authorities were sluggish and incompetent; but the film can’t show this, both for legal reasons and because it wouldn’t make for good drama, so we get this imbalance between frantic style and rather flimsy content.
More importantly, Unstoppable is too relentless. Like its train, it can do nothing but hurtle, and the rhythm becomes monotonous. The action highlights often fail to register; when the train charges through the derailer – the bosses’ final, fruitless attempt to defeat it – we barely even see what happens, the sequence fizzling as badly as the attempt itself. Even the climax, with Chris and Denzel getting to grips with the beast, isn’t quite satisfying, maybe because it doesn’t build to any single pivotal, cut-the-blue-wire moment. The film is fast but not very memorable. Scott isn’t able (or willing) to slow things down or change the emphasis; instead he overloads on helicopter shots, restless little mini-zooms and occasional spurts of fast-motion. For all its virtues, Unstoppable left me with an unmistakable feeling of ‘Is that it?’. Still, I guess it’s solid.
