Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
11/14/10
Now,
THIS is how it's done! Eschewing all the pointless subplots, idiotic
plot contrivances and failures of execution that drag down so many seemingly
can't-miss action movies, veteran action maestro Tony Scott and writer
Mark Bomback run a familiar disaster movie template to perfection in Unstoppable.
Taking a real-life incident that injured no one but demonstrated how an
out-of-control unmanned train might be first unleashed and then stopped,
the movie builds upon it a tale of imminent disaster, unlikely heroes,
bureaucratic incompetence and relentless suspense that doesn't just work
as an action movie but is uncommonly persuasive. It's only in retrospect
that you see the skill with which Bomback moves his pieces around, and
this may well be the best match of subject and filmmaker all year as Scott's
relentless camera work makes it feel like the movie itself is a runaway
train. Unstoppable is a sure-fire crowd-pleaser, a relentless
white-kuckle thrill ride of awesomeness. Yeah, I had a pretty good
time.
It's
a tough time at the rail yard where Will (Chris Pine) is one of a wave
of new, cheaper workers displacing veterans like Frank (Denzel Washington),
who's been assigned to train him. It's already a stressful day for
the newbie, who keeps making phone calls to check in on a court hearing
his new job prevents him from attending, and he makes a rookie mistake,
adding five extra cars to the train the two of them are taking South.
It's about to get a lot more stressful: slacker rail worker Dewey
(Ethan Suplee) steps off a moving train he's taking to a different track,
but he's miscalculated its speed and before he can manually break it, the
train has moved out of the yard and into traffic. He takes this to
Connie (Rosario Dawson), who's in charge of coordinating rail traffic,
and she sends perennially late welder Ned (Lew Temple) to intercept a vehicle
they expect to just be floating down the tracks at low speed. But
by the time he reaches the rendezvous, it's long past: see, the train
isn't just drifting down the tracks, Dewey left it under full power and
it's picking up speed with a dozen trains of an explosive chemical attached.
Corporate honcho Galvin (Kevin Dunn) ties her hands with one poorly thought-out
scheme after another, and soon the only option left on the rails is two
guys who had to drop their train further down the track than planned because
of five extra cars. Frank hatches a wild plan to run the runaway
train down from behind and apply their breaks in the opposite direction,
and it had better work because this “missile the size of the Chrysler Building”
is headed straight for Will's hometown and a curving stretch of elevated
track it'll never get past.
A runaway
train ready to explode, two courageous engineers and a Dead Man's Curve
are really all you need for a kick-ass disaster movie, and, bless its heart,
Unstoppable actually knows that. In a hair under 100 minutes,
Scott introduces us to about a half-dozen key characters, starts the crisis
rolling and then never lets up as tension builds and builds and builds.
It's easy to miss just how steadily one option after another falls away
and one character after another pushes all their chips to the center of
the table, but by the time Frank, Will and the train have all reached that
curve, I was perched on the edge of my seat with my fists clenched:
this is a genuine suspense machine. Both men have families we get
to invest in, Ned, Connie and the government scientist (a nicely understated
Kevin Corrigan) who happens to be in her office that day are instantly
likable, Dunn makes Galvin utterly hissable from the word Go, and that's
it. No passengers, no extraneous townspeople, no extra baggage for
anyone but that stars, and even their backstories are kept to a merciful
minimum. Unstoppable is all about the showdown of man vs.
machine, and Tony Scott, perhaps the most red-meat filmmaker alive, is
the perfect man to bring it to us. When push comes to shove, pretty
much all of Bombeck's choices in the closing moments are spot-on:
it's been quite some time since I've seen the modern disaster movie playbook
so well executed.
When
he's in his zone, Washington is one of the all-time great action movie
stars, and Frank is a role very much in that zone. The iconic Washington
hero is focused on his goal with laser-sharp intensity but is also quick
with a laugh, and takes no crap from anyone. Frank's years on the
job have given him a pool of knowledge guys like Galvin couldn't conceive
of, so he's a step ahead of their silly plans at every turn. Pine
makes a great partner because his quiet, blue collar intensity meshes nicely
with Washington's showier variety, and Will is also in his wheelhouse,
carrying the weight of a major mistake for which he must atone... and lo
and behold, the runaway train is serving atonement up on a silver platter
if he can just survive the effort. Dawson has never been more comfortable
in a role: I totally believed she does this job every day.
Suplee's made a career out of playing incompetent boobs like Dewey, and
Temple is a delight as a guy who doesn't much care about his job on a day
to day basis, but was made for a moment like this.
The
effects are remarkable not so much because they show you things you'd never
imagine, but simply because after watching the movie I'd have sworn there
ARE no effects. It looks every bit like Scott just had his crew shoot
a bunch of trains racing across the Pennsylvania countryside. Some
of that clearly did go on, and the mix of real and manufactured visuals
helps the trains to maintain a reality and weight that's vital to the proceedings,
particularly at the end when a person just wants to try and will that speeding
train to slow down. Cinematographer Ben Seresin keeps the action
flying fast and furious with an able assist from editors Robert Duffy and
Chris Lebenzon and Harry Gregson-Williams' score.
It
doesn't hurt that Unstoppable is both set and filmed in my home
state of Pennsylvania, and it really feels authentically Pennsylvanian
even if the town names are all made up and the movie insists on referring
to Northern and Southern Pennsylvania as though those were distinctions
that matter to us in a state where everything is about whether you're aligned
with Pittsburgh in the West, Harrisburg in the Center or Philadelphia in
the East. My local FOX affiliate WPMT FOX 43 even gets to be the
local news station covering the disaster even if that makes the geography
of the story that seems to be taking place in the Western part of the state
a bit confused.
A movie
like Unstoppable makes action spectacle look pretty easy to plot
and execute, but frequent moviegoers know all too well how challenging
this sort of narrative economy and filmmaking excellence are. It
won't cure cancer or frame the national debate on anything, but Unstoppable
will quicken many a pulse and delight action buffs for years to come.
It's one of the best movies of the year. |
