Unstoppable is a movie I’ve been wanting to see for a while, since I’m a big fan of Denzel Washington. I wasn’t able to watch it while it was running in the cinema, but I’ve finally been able to watch it, and figured it would be a good movie choice to re-start my semi-regular movie reviews.
Unstoppable is a great movie. It does not try to be creative, story-wise it’s about as uncreative as can be. But it makes up for that in successfully creating a tense situation in which you, at times, really don’t know what to expect next. While the ending might be predictable, there were a few moments throughout the film in which I did not know what to expect.
Sadly, the movie is heavily crippled by amazingly bad cinematography. Literally from the first scene I I had to try hard not to be too bothered by the flashy, quick camera movements and zooms, even (or especially) in scenes where nothing “action-y” was happening to begin with. Why we need a slow camera pan followed by a quick-zoom-to-facial-close-up when the main characters simply stand in front of each other talking is beyond me.
After looking up the director Tony Scott‘s previous work, it’s surprising to see this coming from a man who directed the fantastic Man On Fire, the more recent TV show The Good Wife, and the more recent not-all-that-special-but-still-entertaining The Taking Of Pelham 1 2 3. The latter, I take it, was more of a warm-up for Tony Scott to check out how to capture moving vehicles in the most irritating way possible.
The movie tries to mention a bit about the rather stereotypical hollywood character backgrounds (failing marriage, single parent, etc.) but fails to make you care all that much about it. But that’s ok, you’re here to watch a train go nuts, not weep about failing marriages.
Aside from this, Unstoppable was quite entertaining. It managed to make me make me sit on the tip of my chair (figuratively, I was laying in bed) through several occasions in the movie. It was fun to recognize a few characters and their awesomely type-casted roles (I’m looking at you, dude from Cloverfield who just couldn’t shut up), and Denzel is great as always. Chris Pine is an interesting choice, but it works out ok.
All in all, Unstoppable is a movie that makes me reminisce about the typical 90s action movie style. It does not try to bring you plot twists, brilliantly written dialogs or anything of the sort. It’s a no-thrills action-thriller, and delivers exactly that. Incredibly shitty camera work aside, Unstoppable is highly entertaining and great for a friday evening at home.
