by Thomas M. Pender
I was shocked from the moment I first saw the trailer months ago. Denzel Washington, the king of versatile acting and audience appeal and successful acting careers, and Chris Pine, fresh from his hugely popular turn as the new Capt. James T. Kirk in Star Trek, were both acting together in a . . . disaster movie?
Strike one.
They were either bribed with tremendous millions of dollars, or they had nothing better to do, or they acted in the film for charity. There couldn’t possibly have been enough appeal in this script to bring in the big guns. This is a straight-to-video script starring Dolph Lundgren and Norm McDonald, if I ever witnessed one! This piece of crud is laced with every conceivable disaster movie cliché and overused line known to Man, and that’s the fun part about it!
Strike two.
The story is based on actual events. This means that there is a 95.8% chance (you’ll just have to trust me on that!) that everything is going to end up hunky-dory at the end, which takes any notion of surprising the audience completely out of the equation.
Strike three. You’re out (cold, asleep!).
As a fan of both main actors, and also of female lead Rosario Dawson, I’d love to say that there is something redeeming in this flick. Sadly, not one thing is worth seeing or hearing. There are no surprises in any scene. The writing is straight out of Cliché Film School. The end is so schlocky, I guessed the fate of each character immediately before each paragraph appeared on the screen next to his or her face, and was not one degree off absolutely correct on any of them.
An engineerless train plummeting toward a populated town makes for an exciting three-minute news story, but unless you actually have something original or shocking to put into a script, it makes a godawful film plot. I would say that this film was “derailed” or “a train wreck,” but that would be as lame as the film itself . . . so I won’t. Unlike the creators and participants of Unstoppable, I have a little pride.
Rubber Chicken Soup 