Unstoppable: Review

The last time Denzel Washington and director Tony Scott worked together was on the ill-advised disastrous remake of The Taking Of Pelham 123, in which a subway train is hijacked. This time the pair can't seem to let go of the train theme for their new film, Unstoppable. I am pleased to tell you this is a marked improvement on their last film.

Washington plays Frank, a widower who has worked all his life on the railroads. He is joined, on just another day, by rookie Will, who has marital problems, and at first the elder driver isn't impressed with his new partner. Meanwhile, across Pennsyvania, a freak accident sends a train off on an unstoppable journey, it's cargo are tanks of combustible liquids. The runaway train has everyone in a flap, as it heads at full speed towards towns and the train that Frank and Will are driving.

The set-up is simple. Inspired on true events, it is just a train thundering its way across country while the railway bigwigs cannot work out how to stop it without losing millions of dollars in the process. Scott, who has made some terrific action films in the past, is on grounds that he knows well and delivers the pace almost as fast as the locomotive. His usual flashy camerawork is back on show and you cannot help but wish he could direct without having to spin the camera round and round a train till you are almost ready to throw up.

If anyone can play blue collar everyman, it's Washington. The character isn't the most interesting, yet he still manages to bring light and shade to it. Always watchable, never dull. Chris Pine, Captain Kirk in the new Star Trek, is fine as Washington's partner but he isn't given as much interesting character traits as Denzel and so it comes across as workmanlike.

There are moments of truly tense excitement and moments when you think its the dumbest film around, yet it is enormously entertaining and you are strangely hooked from the very first frame. The denument does make you think "Why didn't they try that earlier" but this is a film more about the heroics of ordinary folk than a train that is out of control.

Not the greatest action film ever made but one that you should enjoy if you are looking for a straight foreward piece of escapism. It does the job very well.