Unstoppable - a Review

Being a train buff I had to go see the new Denzel Washington movie Unstoppable.  The movie is based on an incident in 2001 in which a freight train traveled unmanned for some 60 miles across Ohio before finally being stopped by a locomotive that hooked on to the rear of the train and slowed it down enough so someone could hop on and shut the wayward locomotives down.

In the actual incident the train never ran faster than 47 mph and averaged about 30 mph for most of the trip.  When the CSX employee finally was able to board the runaway locomotives the train was only going 10 mph.

Of course, that wouldn't do for an action movie so the thundering runaway in Unstoppable is frequently going 70+, even when the movie's hero jumps aboard to save the day.  This movie is to train buffs what Twister was to storm chasers.

There are other visual effects that stretch reality to the breaking point.  TV news helicopters are frequently shown flying inches above the ground and just a few feet from the rampaging train, and darting around like fighter jets as they chase across Pennsylvania.  Nonsense, of course, as anyone from a city with TV helicopters will tell you.  They stay high and as stable as they can in order to provide a good shot for the folks back home.  They were an unnecessary addition to the onscreen action.

And you can tell how little the moviemakers actually know about train operations from the way they talk about the rescue locomotive as it chases down the train IN REVERSE, as though traveling backwards at high speed is an uncommon thing for freight locomotives.  To a diesel-electric locomotive, reverse is no different than forwards since there are no gears, just electric motors that can run as fast in either direction.  Any freight train you see with multiple locomotives will have some of the units running backwards.

All that aside, it's a decent movie.  There's all the usual conflict between the evil corporate overlords and the local people who are trying to solve the problem while dealing with their own family and personal problems.  And of course, in the end all the problems are solved and the evil overlords dispatched.  There's some good train footage and of course the runaway train has to crash into some stuff to keep it interesting, so a horse trailer and part of another train get blasted by the runaway.

The whole movie stretches credulity throughout, but it wouldn't be Hollywood if it didn't.  It'll keep you entertained for 98 minutes...as long as you don't know much about actual train operations or for that matter, real life.