Film Friday: Unstoppable (2010)

Directed by Ridley Scott’s brother Tony, Unstoppable stars Denzel Washington and Chris Pine as two guys who need to stop a runaway train. This film is based on a real life incident where a train got away from an engineer who hopped out of his cab to manually flip a switch. In some ways, this film is completely brilliant and I absolutely recommend it. Indeed, it’s an enjoyable, exciting film which will keep you on the edge of your seat. Unfortunately, it also pushes its brilliance too far and becomes a parody of itself.

** spoiler alert **

● The Challenge: Before we discuss what Tony Scott did so brilliantly (and so unbrilliantly), let me point out that making this film exciting was a much harder challenge than people may realize. At first blush, a runaway train seems exciting. Trains are ultra-powerful and can do immense damage when they derail. Add in an explosive cargo and you’ve got the makings of a real disaster. BUT don’t forget, trains are highly predictable. Even a runaway train will move at a constant rate of speed down a set path, meaning you know exactly where it will be, you can clear out the area of impact, and you can even knock it off the rails at a point of your choosing. Thus, in practice, a runaway train isn’t as exciting as it seems in the abstract.

So how do you make a runaway train more exciting? Scott found three ways to inject a lot of tension into the film. Unfortunately, he also pushed each solution too far.

● Solution 1: Frenetic Direction. Scott has an eye for color and scenery, and manages to get the most out of each shot by filling each scene with lots of action, e.g. people and cars running all over the place, and using quick edits and some shaky-cam moments to create a sense of frenetic motion which makes everything feel urgent.

Unfortunately, the shaky-cam annoys the heck out of people, me included. The problem with the shaky-cam is that it makes some people motion sick and will cause them to turn their eyes away from the screen and takes them out of the movie. And even if it doesn’t make you sick, it still wears you out because the shaky-cam is the visual equivalent of being blasted by high decibel music. This eventually makes you numb to the movie.

Further, there is a longer term problem with the shaky-cam: desensitization. As people get used to the shaky-cam, it will require ever increasing visual-stimulation to get the same level of excitement. Films that rely on this visual trickery to generate interest will soon seem boring and outdated. In effect, films shot like this are giving themselves a limited shelf-life, and I suspect this is one of those films.

● Solution No. 2: Aggressive Acting. Scott also added large amounts of tension into each scene by apparently telling his actors to fight with each other constantly. These characters don’t talk to each other, they shout at each other. They challenge each other and violate each other’s orders. He even has characters throw phones at each other. This gives the film a sense of tension and makes it feel like high stakes are being played out in each moment, even though they are all just waiting for the derailment.

But there’s a problem with this. Telling the actors to be as angry with each other as possible creates believability issues, which some of these actors aren’t able to overcome. Denzel Washington can. He’s angry about the way the company treats him and he’s angry at Chris Pine being an indifferent idiot. But Washington is a great actor, probably one of the best of our time. He’s got amazing screen presence and has never turned in a bad performance, and he absolutely has what it takes to carry off this character as angry, but not so angry that we doubt that he would do what he is doing in this film.

Chris Pine, however, lacks the skill to play the role. He’s not capable of convincing us that deep down this angry jerk would care enough to go on a suicide mission. Rosario Dawson also isn’t believable as the dispatcher because she’s so angry at her boss that she would have been fired long before, especially as her boss (Kevin Dunn, who plays a generic corporate villain) is equally angry in return and would never allow a dispatcher to be that disrespectful to him. Their relationship feels Hollywood-fake. And ultimately, all of this anger becomes too much and this constant fighting for the sake of fighting starts to feel like a parody of itself. And that brings me to the real issue in this film.

● Solution No. 3: Insane Writing. Dear God. As someone who loves good writing, this film appalls me. . . and I’m sort of laughing when I say that, but not really. The modern school of screenwriting says that each scene should involve conflict and should increase the stakes in some way. You should avoid scenes that don’t push the plot to a higher level of tension. Unstoppable takes that advice far too literally and becomes absurd.

To give you a sense of what I mean, here’s how this film comes across (assume each ellipse marks a new scene about a minute apart): we just learned there’s a runaway train! ...and it’s speeding up! ....and it’s heading for a populated area! ....and it’s packed with explosives! ....and uranium! ....and nerve gas! ....and it’s going to derail in the middle of town! ....and the phone lines are down so we can’t reach the town! ....and there’s a daycare center where it will derail! ....and every kid in town is at the daycare center today to receive an award from the mayor! ....and the Pope is a surprise guest! ....and the kids all brought puppies! ....one of the puppies holds the key to fighting cancer! ....and your wife just called, she’s pregnant! ....she’s calling from the daycare center! ....and there’s another identical train coming from the other direction! Ahhhh!

See the point? The first couple add to the tension nicely. But at some point, the writer goes too far and this takes on the feel of parody. The problem I had with Unstoppable was that every minute, they added some new complication and after a while this became a distraction. Rather than making the plot more interesting, it began to feel like the writer was showing off. Indeed, I found myself wondering whether the title, Unstoppable, wasn’t meant as a reference to the writer’s view of their ability to keep ratcheting up the drama rather than the train.

The best way to describe what happened here is that Tony Scott was absolutely brilliant at finding ways to make a rather dull story -- two guys chase down a train to apply the brakes -- into something exciting. But he lacked the feel his brother has for taking his foot off the throttle to reset the audience. It’s hard to keep the audience red-lined for 98 minutes no matter how many things you throw at them, and maybe it’s not a good idea to try?