Unstoppable

I became interested in seeing Unstoppable after seeing the trailers for the movie.  The movie looked interesting and I do usually like Denzil Washington.

Unstoppable is actually inspired by true events that happened in Ohio in 2001.  I did read some about the real incident after seeing the movie and it seems like several things have been changed for the movie.  I’m sure that was done to make things more exciting.  The setting was also changed to Pennsylvania.

At a rail yard, a worker is moving a train.  He jumps off to change a switch and then is unable to reboard the train.  It is assumed at that point that the train is just coasting.  It turns out that some lever slipped, allowing the train to build up speed.  Connie Hooper is in charge at the rail yard and she starts trying to find a way to deal with the train.  Conductor Will Colson and engineer Frank Barnes are working together for the first time that day.  Will hasn’t been out of training that long and he does make a few mistakes.  They barely miss a collision with the runaway train.  When other ideas to stop the train fail, Frank and Will put their own plan into motion.

I really enjoyed Unstoppable and found it to be a very entertaining movie.  The pace moves pretty fast after a slower start, though that is expected since the movie only covers a matter of hours.  The runaway train provides a decent amount of action for the movie and there are some suspenseful scenes as well. The way that things work out is somewhat predictable, but that doesn’t keep the movie from being entertaining.  During some scenes, usually ones involving some kind of action, jerky camera work turns up.  I hate that and don’t think it adds anything to a movie other than making it harder to tell what is going on. 

There are several characters in Unstoppable and the movie does jump back and forth between them throughout the movie.  There really isn’t much character development, but that doesn’t bother me since the movie is entertaining.  Will and Frank probably are developed a bit more than the others.  They have a few issues at first, but they end up working well together.  Denzil Washington and Chris Pine do well with their parts.  Connie is trying everything she can think of to deal with the situation.  Rosario Dawson is fine in the part.  Other workers for the railroad turn up every so often, though none of them are really that developed.

Overall, Unstoppable is a well done, entertaining movie. It has a decent amount of action and I think it deserves to be seen.  Fans of Denzil Washington should definitely check it out.

I did get a review posted on Epinions.

Unstoppable