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bluemeanie
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Posted: November 19, 2010 at 12:51pm
I do not enjoy the latter films of Mr. Tony Scott such as:
The Taking of Pelham 123
Deja Vu
Domino
Man on Fire
Spy Game
His films do very little for me. They all feel the same. Maybe it's because they are all shot the same and because Denzel Washington is in almost all of them. Whatever happened to his "True Romance" days...his "Crimson Tide" days...the days when I actually considered him a formidable talent? "Unstoppable" is the latest undertaking from Ridley's less-talented brother. It's a film about a runaway train. Wow. Tension.
Sure -- I get the idea that something that massive moving that quickly can be a devastating thing. I mean, that's why they have railroad crossings, right? But there is just something so non-threatening about a train as the villain of this film that I could not get sufficiently engaged. "Under Siege 2: Dark Territory" did a better job of it, maybe because Eric Bogosian was the villain who used the train as his vessel. Here, the train is Eric Bogosian. The other villain is the corporate bigwig, played with brass asshole-ness by Kevin Dunn. He wants the train saved at any and all cost to human life. He's basically like a genocidal madman and no one seems to notice.
Denzel Washington plays the Danny Glover "three days from retirement" role except he didn't retire and was served his pink slip (a scathing indictment of our current economic problems). Washington gets to be the wise old train man who is always trying to show-up the rookie. When he utters, "A bad day out here will get you killed" -- I kind of chuckled. I am sure it's true and I am sure being a train conductor is a dangerous job -- but is it more dangerous than crab fishing? More dangerous than storm chasing? They make it sound like being a damned train conductor is one of the most dangerous jobs on the damned planet. I ain't buying it.
Chris Pine plays the smart-ass rookie who's in the middle of a possible divorce? And a custody battle for his kid? I use questions marks because that is never really elaborated on too much unless you count the Act 3 story involving Pine using a gun on a guy he thought was having an affair with his wife. But Chris Pine plays the smart-ass rookie just right and he and Washington work well together though their roles were far more paltry than I had imagined. In fact, they didn't really seem to have as much screen time as the Rosario Dawson character who basically just serves the purpose of being a black woman in charge.
How was the action? How is the action in any Tony Scott film -- not bad. But I didn't relate for any of these characters. Once the innocent school kids got out of the way I really didn't have a visceral enough threat to be sucked in by the story. I just had this long ass train barreling down a track and crashing through horses and carts and such and some pretty generic characters thinking of how to stop it. Boo. I want more than that in a film about a runaway train -- you need to wow me. Wowed I was not. 5/10.
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Crispy
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Posted: November 22, 2010 at 12:03am
I pretty much made every complaint you listed the first time i saw the trailer. What a stupid premise.
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doney
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Posted: January 16, 2011 at 5:53pm
i watched it last night, i tried to enjoy it, but as a train driver myself i just kept on finding holes in this runaway train concept (especially in this day and age where loco's have every system possible to prevent such a thing)
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C L
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Posted: May 7, 2011 at 8:24pm
It was just ok. Denzel was charismatic enough to make it watchable. 5/10
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