Unstoppable

A train weighing a million tonnes, 800 metres long and packed with highly explosive material. And there is no one in control of it. Tony Scott goes big with Unstoppable. However, in a ranking of the most original action films, this wouldn’t place even in the top one hundred. The plot is blatantly p r e d i c t a b l e, which is somewhat justified only by the fact that it was inspired by actual events.  The lives of children, animals and heroic government employees are in danger. Unstoppable doesn’t differ from Scott’s previous train ride (The Taking of Pelham 123) in the nature of the main character (a sensible ordinary guy who becomes a hero), the relative lack of psychedelic visuals for a Scott film, the large amount of pathos or the forced emphasis on family values, but only in the absence of a villain. A simple failure of the human factor is what triggers the action. This time, the idiots aren’t cops (though there is a delightfully unnecessary airborne pirouette performed by a police car); the bad decision is made by a boss, whose bourgeois ass ultimately gets kicked to the curb by the working-class hero’s actions. Unstoppable really comes across as an ode to people who work with their hands and feet, but the constantly fast pace won’t give you time to think about that interpretation. The camera is constantly in motion, shots are very short even during the brief dialogue scenes, and we have to divide our attention between multiple events happening in parallel throughout the film. Scott took the main limitation of trains, i.e. the ability to go only forward and backward, and turned it into the main strength of the action scenes (the whole film is essentially one long action scene). The last-second miss was just as breathtaking as the last time in silent slapstick, of which it’s impossible not to recall at least The General. Whereas Keaton worked primarily with the breadth of a shot, Scott rather uses its depth, as if he’s heading toward using a stereoscopic format. That would have been a treat. Unfortunately, it will never happen. The unstoppable Tony Scott has reached his final station. 75% (11/17/2012)

Especially in the last 30 minutes a solid adrenaline dose. It's been done before and in a better version (Končalovský's Runaway Train, for instance), but otherwise this action flick has one big trump card, and that is the unorthodox setting of railway transport. Scott ticks along with the action, thanks to which even the mandatory clichés surrounding the protagonist's family can be survived unscathed. (12/25/2010)

A very predictable and unoriginal film that now, in 2010, doesn’t deserve any attention. Tony should work on more interesting projects, he still does action very well. The film did inject some adrenaline in my veins, but it’s a pity it didn’t manage to make me feel really tense, because there is absolutely no doubt about how things will turn out. Cliché incarnated. (12/20/2010)

♫ She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes, she’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes... ♫ This doesn’t really sum everything up, but Scott’s “playing with trains" is a perfect example of suspense from start to finish. And does it matter that he achieves this using a thousand and one movie clichés? No it doesn’t because in any case you have no time to realize this before the final credits come up. (12/23/2010)

The title doesn't lie. Tony Scott made an uncompromising action flick that combines the atmosphere of old-school John Frankenheimer or Don Siegel blockbusters with contemporary, digitally supercharged visuals, and it gets going early on... and then it's just goes, goes, goes. True, there's not much that's unexpected or revelatory in Unstoppable, but it's such an entertaining and fun film that I found myself staring. As I hold the DVD cover in my hands, I wonder why the hell it didn't come to the movie theatres? (03/29/2011)