Commentary by Michael J. Lee (October 2010)
Whatever connotation it concocts in your mind, we've been thinking of Unstoppable simply as "Armageddon with a train." Like the 1998 disaster flick, Denzel Washington's latest adventure on the rails centers on would-be heroes cheered on by a nation of bystanders as a destructive force hurtles closer and closer to a helpless population. In the case of Unstoppable, the scale is obviously smaller, but the set-up and structure adhere more or less to the same formula: desk jockeys determine an imminent threat and shout orders over a wire, while everything that could possibly go wrong does so in sequential fashion. A classroom of kids, stray horses, and a leaky grain car take their turns popping up at inopportune moments, while the runaway transport continues on its inevitable path of destruction toward a fuel storage facility that will mix nicely with the train's unfortunate cargo of explosives and toxic chemicals.
Like most blockbuster action flicks, Unstoppable has the element of noisy spectacle on its side: the film is loud, boisterous, and fast-paced. The train starts rolling on its death march in the story's opening moments, then quickly becomes a 70 mile per hour cacophony of noise and steel. The dialogue is delivered with equal haste, with characters frequently rattling off technical jargon, stopping only to get into the occasional shouting match with one another over the best course of action.
Unstoppable is loosely based on a real life incident in which an unmanned train cruised through Ohio for over 60 miles. Naturally, the movie punches up the events Hollywood style, throwing in a tenuous father/daughter relationship here, an estranged husband there, and mixing in a few corporate fat cats for added villainy. Rosario Dawson's character succinctly describes the titular vehicular antagonist as "a missile the size of the Chrysler Building." Whether you interpret that as hyperbole or drama is probably a good indicator as to how you would receive the rest of the film.
WATCH THE TRAILER FOR UNSTOPPABLE
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