Directed by Tony Scott. Starring Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, Rosario Dawson 12A cert, gen release, 99 min
IN A BETTER world, all Tony Scott movies would feature unexploded ticking bombs and runaway trains. The director of such winning high-octane yarns as True Romanceand Crimson Tideseems to have realised as much. Most of his recent output ( Déjà Vu, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3) has pivoted around some massive impending disaster and its possible victims.
In this spirit, Unstoppable, Scott's best film in a decade, pleads the case for old-school grammar. The director's fourth collaboration with resident muse Denzel Washington eschews the MTV gloss of Man on Firein favour of such time- honoured grammar as the big bang two-step. Here's a shot of an unmanned speeding train, here's the carriage stuffed with happy, playful schoolchildren that lies in its path, here's that unmanned speeding train again, and so on.
The pitch has a similarly simple, elegant ring about it; an unmanned, half-mile-long freight train is hurtling towards a residential area laden down with explosive materials. Can an old dog engineer (Washington) and a young pup conductor (Chris Pine) stop bickering and work together to prevent a catastrophe?
Back at HQ, a slinky Rosario Dawson provides the reluctant duo with crucial technical information: “We got a floater!” and “Eight great cars of hazardous chemicals; it’s like a giant missile!” They, in turn, shout back dialogue so economically constructed it could be written in haiku: “This ain’t training,” says Denzel. “Out here you get killed.” More good-natured ribbing follows.
If that weren't charming and boyish enough, Unstoppablelays on the locomotive porn ("Secure all the grade crossings on the line!") and helicopter explosions. There's even an appealing robustness in the film's locale – the trainyards of Pennsylvania. There's so much blue-collar strut, we kept expecting Bruce Springsteen to wander into the frame.
And then they go and spoil it all by cutting to Hooters. Who on earth wants to look at Hooters chicks when Rosario Dawson is in the house?
