Unstoppable: Greatest Train Movie Ever

A new best Train Movie has left the station: Unstoppable.

Earlier this year, I blogged about the 100 Best Train Movies special issue of Train Magazine. That wonderful publication listed The Train, directed by John Frankenhemier and starring Burt Lancaster as the best train movie and I agreed. The magazine prompted me to get the flick. Before that, I would have listed La Bete Humane, which made the top five.

Anyway, Unstoppable will make everyone revise their lists. The runaway train is a metaphor for our out of control society that is endangered by wealthy fat cats and incompetent workers and can only be saved by righteous men and women of competence and integrity.

Oh screw that.

Denzel and the new Captain Kirk stop a really fast runaway train from blowing up a town. Saving the day is not easy, and even though the town is saved, lots of stuff gets blowed up real good along the way.

Best action film of the year!

Best train film of the century!


I don’t think any director blows as hot or as cold as Tony Scott. Early in his career, he made a truly great vampire film, The Hunger, and the reprehensible, barely watchable and one of the most blatant example of Reagan-era jingoism, Top Gun. The guy has blown hot or cold from the get go. He either makes something you hate or you like alot.

I liked his film, Man on Fire, also with Denzel, a quasi-revenge action thriller. Washington, a bad ass ex-cia or something like that past, takes the role of body guard for Dakota Fanning. They form a bond, she gets kidnapped and Washington tortures and kills bad guy after bad guy until she is saved. I can’t remember if the guy that he placed the explosive device in his rectum was the same thug whose fingers he cut off then burned with the automobile cigarette lighter. He tells him something along the lines, oh you’re going to die, and it’s just a matter of how much pain you want before you tell me what I need to know. Denzel is an interesting actor, one of the best actors of his generation, loves to be a bad ass. The dude can do Shakespeare with the best of them, but he loves to play an action role and he is good in them, he raises the level of pulp to art—well, his acting skills make the story more credible at least. He recently did a Mad Max post apocalyptical role in Book of Eli, a really cool film.

In Unstoppable, he foregoes the bad ass and plays the competent everyman, suddenly thrust into an extraordinary situation where he will make everything okay if they only let him do his job. Ironically, Denzel and Scott teamed up for the re-make Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three—a subway train film, the original made the Train Magazine List, although nowhere near the Top 10—just last year. Pelham was enjoyable but mostly forgettable.

In Unstoppable, Denzel is the experienced railroad man, and the new Captain Kirk—Chris Pine—is the rookie. Which wins out—the crafty wisdom of age or the energetic recklessness of youth? Well, they work it out and together prevent a train from destroying Pennsylvania—oops!, I forgot to say spoiler alert (Denzel is Luke Skywalker’s father).

Tony Scott’s direction technique is the equivalent of a mosaic. The rapidity of the numerous cross-cuts leaves you breathless, and he is always going for the details. Hitchcock inspired close ups interspersed with wide views. There’s the train head on, there’s somebody knuckles; dozens of school children screaming, dispatcher lips talking into the phone receiver. Hitchcock is an obvious influence, but it’s sort of like, what if Hitchcock had A.D.D., drank a Red Bull, snorted two lines of meth, one line of coke, then ordered a double shot espresso. You get the hyperactive picture, picture, picture.

The adrenaline is ramped up to an exhilarating level. Never a dull moment and even the slow bits—such as Denzel and the new Captain Kirk exchanging personal back stories—only serve as needed relief to the tense action. Scott quickly rebuilds the tension after each lull. Inter-cut throughout the film is live news footage, as well as a smart phones and such, broadcasting the unfolding disaster. Fox News Reporting: Runaway Train! This device not only quickly moves the story along while informing the audience on important to the story matters, like what a derailer is—it makes the story ultimately contemporary, the experience of the media drenched world in which we live, and enhances the film with the edginess of real time action. The frenzied story seeps into our psyche.

Cinema at its purest form is a visceral medium; Tony Scott, even more so than his brother, Riddley, is one of the most visceral directors in the history of movies. He might make more duds or films that I could give a crap about than other directors—shoot, everybody has to make a living—but when he is on, film lovers must take that ride.

In terms of film, this might be Scott’s strongest movie. I admit to a bias, I love trains, all trains, everything about trains. I love trains in fact, in concept, as metaphor. I wish someone would fund an Amtrak-based film. But at least we have this tribute to America’s mighty system of freight trains and the people who make them run. I think my favorite part was the opening scenes, setting up the story, where we see how a freight yard actually words, the roles of engineer (Denzel) and conductor (Pine), hooking up cars, etc. Screw save the embankment or renovating the power house district, bring back the freight rail that ran along fifth and rebuild the waterfront freight yard.

Alas, like the lonesome whistle of a locomotive I’m a lone voice in the wilderness. Before I mix more metaphors, what I meant when I said film was that there is something that film can do that literature, theater, painting and sculpture can’t—make us feel movement. Dance can of course, but that is only the human form. Movement that only film can depict can be sheer, totally captivating entertainment. That’s why chase scenes have been intrinsic to film since its inception; one of the first films was the Great Train Robbery, or the train coming into the station by the Lume Brothers. I guess that’s why Train Magazine had to come with 100 Train Films. The story is simple—halting a dangerous runaway train—yet the choreography of getting from danger to safety continually fascinates. Scott throws in everything—horses have to be removed from a stalled horse trailer as the train barrels forth—and the train, relentlessly moves ahead, picking up speed. At their edge of our seats, the audience watches every second.

Can Denzel and the new Captain Kirk use their train knowledge and ingenuity to save the poor children in town, which of course include their own kids? Want to guess? Can saving the train give Denzel’s two daughters back respect for their father that was temporarily lost due to a minor sub-plot point? Can saving the train save the marriage of the new Captain Kirk?




If you don’t know the answers already, either you have never seen a movie or you don't desire fun when you see a film.

Special shout out to Rosiario Dario, who was in Clerks II. She is the dispatcher, the woman at the desk and Ethan Suplee is the overweight screw up who causes the train to runaway. He’s a character actor, Tuna in Blow, and he got his start in Mallrats. Be in a Kevin Smith film, and you will get story critical supporting roles!