TRAILER REPORT: Unstoppable

Tony Scott.

The man who directed True Romance,

the erotically charged David Bowie vampire thriller The Hunger,

and the homoerotically charged Tom Cruise Air Force thriller Top Gun

Of course, it's not like his brother, Ridley, has lived up to the potential he showed in Alien and Blade Runner. (Yes, I went there Gladiator and Black Hawk Down fans.)

And while Tony Scott would probably never make anyone's Best Directors list, his direction was perfectly suitable and created some memorable films. Yet, around the time of Enemy of the State (1998), Tony Scott's style changed into something different. He became a fast paced action director, in the bad way. Quick cuts and extreme close-ups filmed with the graininess of a cheap 1990s digital camcorder began to define Scott's work, fully forming in 2004's Man on Fire and getting driven to excess 2005's Domino.

In November 2010, Tony Scott continues this trend with Unstoppable. Starring old stand-by Denzel Washington (star of three Scott's last four films: 2004's Man on Fire, 2006's Deja Vu, 2009's The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3) and new Captain Kirk Chris Pine, Unstoppable is about a train. … AND THIS TRAIN IS OUT OF CONTROL!!!!!!!!!!!!

The trailer begins introducing young go-getter Chris Pine and weathered veteran Denzel Washington who works at some sort of train station. After exchanging hack barbs (“I just don't like working in a damned day care center.” “I don't like working in a retirement home”) with a couple of other train guys, we learn that it's Chris Pine's training day.

Monkey in an Engineer's Outfit's Got Nothing On Me

(It's not racist, it's a riff on the King Kong line.)

(He won the damned Oscar.)

Like in most buddy cop films, we learn that Chris Pine has something of a wife, and Denzel Washington has two daughters. Combined with the shot of them watching Denzel being all action hero on the news near the end of the trailer and Denzel being an “average” guy who ends up being a superman, I'm pretty sure his character went through the exact same thing in Pelham.

But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. After all, we need a plot! There's a train of adorrrrrrrrrrrrrable children also riding the rails! These kids have the level of adorability that I'm relatively sure Sam Raimi made fun of in Spider-Man on the Roosevelt Island tram.

Then a giant train goes VROOOOOOOOM.

Cut to Rosario Dawson (star of one of the worst sequels of all time- Clerks 2) talking to train employee/half-wits Ethan Suplee (star of underrated follow-up and cult comedy classic- Mallrats) and some other guy. She explains the movie's plot.

Rosario Dawson: “We have an unmanned train rolling into a highly populated area with no air brakes...?”

Ethan: “Yeah.”

It gets worse...

There's an Evil White Corporate Guy.

Evil White Corporate Guy: “What do we have to worry about in terms of cargo?”

Rosario “ Eight freight cars of hazardous chemicals. We're not just talking about a train, we're talking about a missile the size of a Chrysler building!!”

Didn't Rob Lowe star in this as a TV movie on NBC?

It gets worse

Denzel: “I need to know where that train is!”

Guy: “We're not sure!”

Denzel in his classic semi-sarcastic/semi-serious manner: “You're not sure? Well find out!”

It gets worse

Ethan Suplee's Friend: “It gets worse.”

Guy: “I got 150 students coming in on some field trip!”

Yes, now the adorrrrrrrrrrable children are in danger.

At this point, you expect to hear about how the children are disabled in some way

and that there are also puppies on the track

and those puppies are the guardians for new born kitties...

...and those kittens are being sent to an orphanage...

run by nuns.

But not the types of nuns who hate gay people!

Eventually, Denzel and Chris Pine decide to go on a suicide mission because it's what people do in movies like this but...

It gets worse

Evil White Corporate Guy (because it's always an evil white corporate guy) “is not risking this company just because some engineer wants to play hero!” Of course Evil White Corporate Guy must protect the profits! Look at Evil White Corporate Guy up there in his Evil White Corporate Tower doing Evil White Corporate Things, far away from the 20-45 mile event radius where if the train crashes EVERYBODY DIES.

And then the trailer shows a montage of the giant chase for the train. A big mess of cop cars that flip over several times.

Helicopters in danger. Guys hanging from helicopters that slam into trains. In some way it's like Airport 1975.

Denzel pulls out the “tell my wife and children I love them!!!!!”

Explosions.

More explosions.

And even more explosions!

And it ends with the trademark Denzel laugh.

Much like the rest of Tony Scott's filmography Unstoppable seems like another trite, forgettable action film. His films over the past decade or so have never really been major hits, usually falling in the mid-$60 millions (Man on Fire was his biggest success with $77 million; Domino his biggest failure at $10 million- maybe that's why he feels the need to include Denzel Washington in everything), and Unstoppable will likely fall in the mid-$60s as well. Opening November 12 it faces competition from alien invasion thriller Skyline (also 11/12), Paul Haggis' Russell Crowe/Liam Neeson prison escape drama The Next Three Days (11/19), and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollow Part 1 (11/19).