Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Unstoppable
Hollywood lacking in fresh ideas this is a riff on the Eric Roberts and Jon Voight vehicle Runaway Train. Here Morgan Freeman is the old pro days from being laid off and Chris Pine the rookie both on and off the screen. The pair who set the disaster in motion are so inept as to be caricatures were it not for the stories my rail traffic control friends have related.
Humans make mistakes but sending an 11,000,000 ton train loaded with explosive toxic materials hurtling down the main line at full throttle with no one on-board rates pretty high on the foul-up scale. We get the usual Corporate what will this do to stock values weaselling and precious time wasted attempting to minimize Corporate losses and bad public relations.
However the movie is about the interplay between Pine and Freeman. When we learn that Freeman has been given a 90-day termination notice it serves to explain his crusty treatment of newly arrived Pine serving his first day on the job as Conductor to Freeman’s Engineer--these days both ride in the cab.
After the rather slow initial scenes that serve to set up the disaster to come the movie is one extended adrenalin rush. We get to see rail cars turned to kindling and a few trackside obstacles pancaked. The one character I have so far ignored is the rail traffic controller played by Rosario Dawson who co-ordinates the rescue attempt and runs interference between our heroes and the Corporate weasels. At the end of the movie we get a where are they now summation in support of the supposition that these events actually happened. The final rescue event which stops the train is rather anti-climactic after the hour we’ve just been through. Such high-concept movies require a certain amount of suspension of disbelief and one needs a great deal of it here to sustain the notion that these trains are really hurtling along at 70 miles-per-hour.
Humans make mistakes but sending an 11,000,000 ton train loaded with explosive toxic materials hurtling down the main line at full throttle with no one on-board rates pretty high on the foul-up scale. We get the usual Corporate what will this do to stock values weaselling and precious time wasted attempting to minimize Corporate losses and bad public relations.
However the movie is about the interplay between Pine and Freeman. When we learn that Freeman has been given a 90-day termination notice it serves to explain his crusty treatment of newly arrived Pine serving his first day on the job as Conductor to Freeman’s Engineer--these days both ride in the cab.
After the rather slow initial scenes that serve to set up the disaster to come the movie is one extended adrenalin rush. We get to see rail cars turned to kindling and a few trackside obstacles pancaked. The one character I have so far ignored is the rail traffic controller played by Rosario Dawson who co-ordinates the rescue attempt and runs interference between our heroes and the Corporate weasels. At the end of the movie we get a where are they now summation in support of the supposition that these events actually happened. The final rescue event which stops the train is rather anti-climactic after the hour we’ve just been through. Such high-concept movies require a certain amount of suspension of disbelief and one needs a great deal of it here to sustain the notion that these trains are really hurtling along at 70 miles-per-hour.
# posted by garthmailman@gmail.com @ 5:50 pm 
