Unstoppable reviews

Tony Scott has been applying hyper-coloured flash to movies for three decades, but Unstoppable, his two-men-against-a-runaway-train logistical rollercoaster ride, is the first in some while where style and concept get on a treat. Based on what they now like to call “actual” events, one suspects about as closely as Speed was based on research into the LA transit system, it exists in a satisfying zone between simplicity, laser-targeted technical proficiency, and giddy dumbness.

Tony Scott trying to be clever (Domino) is not a pretty sight, whereas Tony Scott unleashing his arsenal of excitable tricks on a movie about a speedy driverless train is... well, it IS a pretty sight, and more.

We begin in the railyards of Pennsylvania, where the schlubby and gormless driver of number 777, whose name is Dewey, and who was therefore born to screw up his job, jumps out to switch tracks manually. He’s left the gear in full throttle, and the brake slips, diabolically: it’s just a digit away from the sign of the beast, after all. Coincidence? You decide. From here on, the entire cast starts shouting, and as anyone will know who’s ever seen a Tony Scott film, whether it’s Top Gun, Crimson Tide or one of the mangier Denzel Washington ones, this man is to shouting in the movies what Monet was to water lilies.


“So now what the hell do we do?” bellows someone at least once. “Call in a HazMat team!” Wait, what? That stands for hazardous materials — 777 is not only carrying flammable chemicals used in the production of glue, but is heading towards a hilarious elevated curve in the town of Stanton, bang next to which near-90°-bend some bright spark in the planning office chose to situate a entire farm of fuel tanks.

Salvation, we can be fairly sure, does not lie in the hands of the train’s penny-pinching corporate owners, who make various measly attempts to halt its progress, with cavalier regard for the human and environmental fallout, in between golf strokes. No, it’s entirely down to Denzel Washington and Chris Pine, as a pair of bickering employees who’ve just met. One is on his way out (forced early retirement), the other on his way up: if this chapter in the script wasn’t called “Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Mismatched Blue-Collar Heroes”, it should have been. These two must put aside their generational differences and arrest, with sheer speed of reflex and strength of bicep, what their feisty controller (Rosario Dawson) describes as “a missile the size of the Chrysler Building”.

Scott ratchets up the stakes with every hokey means available — I particularly liked the trainload of kids in 777’s path who are out, why of course, on a Railway Safety field trip. Because all disaster movies need such a figure, Kevin Dunn has the overfamiliar role of Boss Who Won’t Listen, And Will Instead Make All The Face-Saving Bad Calls For The Parent Company — he looks almost annoyed when the maverick lead duo do anything successful to slow it down.

The formulae tick over enjoyably, but the primary pleasures here are virtually abstract. The movie’s colours pop like an industrial disco, complete with glitterball. The frenetic editing and relentless sound, which gives Scott’s scattier pictures the quality of a juggler on crack, even gel quite well with all the scurrying human effort. If the aggressive banter between the leads — who are fine, but no more than fine — gets drowned out sometimes, it doesn’t matter, because we know exactly the kind of thing they’re saying after one scene. Has Scott twigged a great way to save on script fees? Set your juggernaut in motion, and just turn the screech, rattle and roar up to eleven.