Unstoppable – Review
The set-up here could have and should have derailed Unstoppable before it even got going. See if you don’t groan or roll your eyes here: the reason for the train to be unmanned, despite its cargo containing combustible liquids and poisonous gas, is a typical lazy, fat worker (Ethan Suplee) leaves the train to move a lever to switch tracks, for only for the lever to slide into acceleration (naturally) and now he can’t get back on. Sheepishly, he tells his boss (Rosario Dawson) what happened only for her to tell him and his equally as lazy co-worker who forgot to properly connect the brakes, what to do. As they leave, they call her a “ball-buster”. Ugh.
Yet, Unstoppable overcomes this cheesy and poorly written set-up and follows the laid-out track to a fine, if not forgettable guilty pleasure. Director Tony Scott - if we could all agree on something about him for a sec – is he can create pulse-pounding tension, and even with his odd zooms and frantic aerial footage, Unstoppable picks up speed from the middle of the film until its conventional conclusion, much like the runaway train itself. There’s nothing new here. Denzel Washington is his typical self, as he has been in his last few pictures. Chris Pine is good. But even if Unstoppable is just coasting, the combination of Washington, Pine, and the runaway train equals a breezy time. That rhymed.
It’s mindless entertainment from start to finish, but if anything of note, is the subtle look at the once proud American workforce, now eroded by a younger, lazy workforce and a dispassionate company bureaucracies. Cut pensions, being discriminative about age without doing so in a way to get the State after them, and the complete cold shoulder to an employee’s longevity in a company has hurt America in this last decade. Our once proud backbone of the country – blue-collar, hardworking Middle Class – have now just got a boot up their rear end. This interesting dynamic fuels Unstoppable more even with its cheesy dialogue and reactions (like most of the exposition-heavy news casters). It won’t hit the same cord with some as it will with a few, but with a great, fun performance by possibly the film’s scene-stealer in Lew Temple, Unstoppable is a guilty pleasure through and through. Take that however you will.
Rating: 
Loved the film. Chris Pine was hot.