Tuesday 16 November 2010

Unstoppable

The villain of Tony Scott's Unstoppable is a train. Not a drug lord, not an assassin, not an Austrian-accented killer robot from the future, but a regular, standardly engineered train rolling down the tracks at near-maximum velocity. It's like Jan de Bont's Speed (1994), except there’s no flesh-and-blood antagonist who the heroes have to thwart, not counting a greedy and snide executive (Transformers’ Kevin Dunn) who is the top-ranking decision maker.

Inspired by the "Crazy Eights" incident of 2001, Unstoppable revolves around the unfortunately unmanned runaway freight train #777. Its uncontrolled status begins when a sloppy engineer (Blow's Ethan Suplee) jumps out of the slow-moving vehicle to reset a switch by the tracks, only to find that he is unable to climb back aboard when the train unexpectedly speeds up.

Meanwhile, Will Colson (Star Trek's Chris Pine) is beginning work as a conductor, riding with railway veteran Frank Barnes (Man on Fire's Denzel Washington) in train #1206. As they go about their job, the blue-collar duo are told of a half-mile long train carrying molten phenol that's travelling uncontrollably at speeds of over 70 miles per hour.

The media, of course, hastily gets involved, with news stations covering the event and following the "missile" as it hurtles through Pennsylvania, predicted to crash while crossing a curved bridge in Stanton and land in a fuel oil tank farm. Uh-oh.

Disaster lurks on every turn #777 takes, from a horse trailer appearing on the tracks, to failed attempts at slowing down the shooting railway vehicle. When hopes begin to shrink from everybody else, Will and Frank make the brave decision to try and help stop the unstoppable monster using their comparatively miniscule locomotive.

Scott is known for the distinctive visual flair he's picked up in recent times, shown off in Man on Fire and Domino. Here, his signature style isn't as erratic or trippy as his latest works, but Unstoppable still hosts an in-your-face shooting method -- in a very good way. He keeps the camera always in motion, just like the matter at hand, heightening the drama and tension that races throughout the film.

He spins the camera around the characters, a fashion which flows excellently from scene to scene, smashing through a premise that is, for the most part, two dudes sitting in a fast-moving box, chasing after a much bigger, even faster box.

There's barely a second speeding by in Unstoppable that's not either intriguing or edge-of-your-seat. Mark Bomback (writer of Live Free or Die Hard) scribes, setting the stakes high, filling the film with suspenseful set-piece after suspenseful set-piece, Scott's direction enhancing the exhilarating nature of each blood-pumping sequence.

Denzel's character is a father of two teenage daughters (both Hooters waitresses, I might add) who's experienced in both his job and in life. He knows all there is to know about his line of work, of which he has proudly been a part of for 28 long years. He likes a joke, but raises an eyebrow at Will's inexperience.

Will is a cranky rookie who tells Frank he wants to do "something different" with his career. His home life is a troubled one, making phone calls about a restraining order while on the job, much to Frank's annoyance. The typical "it's a long story" reply is the answer to Frank's probing of Will's domestic situation. "We've got a long day," Frank throws back.

The two are both working-class citizens thrown into a predicament that seems out of their league. Their differing attitudes spark friction at first, but the dangerous situation they encounter and desire to eradicate causes them to work together more smoothly.

Talking to the would-be heroes from headquarters, Connie Hooper (Sin City's Rosario Dawson) is desperate to bring the chaos-on-wheels train to a halt. Despite pressure from her money-for-brains superior, she believes in Frank and Will's determination to solve the increasingly risky situation, eventually taking their words over that of her boss.

Unstoppable is a perfectly paced, vigorously entertaining thrill ride. A race-against-the-clock action thriller, its anxious demeanour refuses to cease. Scott directs the film to a stunning level, Washington and Pine's chemistry is exceptional, and Bomback's script, although it has its not-so-strong moments, sets the stage for tension to run wild. Buy your ticket now. Your cinema ticket, I mean. Trains you might be iffy on after this.

8/10

No comments:

Post a Comment