Unstoppable (2010)

Written at the time of the film's release...

"The Braking of Pelham 4-5-6"
or
"So...Now What the Hell Do We Do?"

Tony Scott's last film was the very "meh" update of The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 with Denzel Washington as a harried subway supervisor on the day that crazy terrorist John Travolta decides to take a train (and its passengers) hostage. The movie was hysterical in the "hair-on-fire" way (and not in the "ha-ha" way) where the earlier Joseph Sargent-directed version was cleverly funny, the film-makers leaching colors out of the picture and backing it with a hip-hop beat. It was a dull and lifeless movie with all sorts of editing tricks and false drama trying to make the thing seem more like an action movie than the material had the capacity to fulfill. So, what you got was a movie that felt like it was suffering from inappropriate  'roid-rage.

Perhaps they should have skipped Pelham and gone straight to Unstoppable (called that because, presumably, Andrey Konchalovskiy already made Runaway Train in 1985!). Based on the "Crazy 8's" incident in 2001, where an engineer-less train—train 777, making it, apparently, that much closer to "the Choo-Choo of the Beast"—carrying dangerous chemicals (the "molten phenol" used in the film), moved unimpeded and under power at speeds up to 48 mph, it has, like Pelham, been ginned up with drama and death and derring-do, and the inevitable "countdown to disaster" that could end Scranton, Pennsylvania as we know it.

"Hello, do you read?"

Everything that can go wrong can and does. The train is under power due to an operator error—he was under pressure from co-workers to move a heavily laden train quickly, and left the cab to try and move a track-switcher—with its brakes disconnected, on a collision course with another filled with school-kids on a "train-safety" field-trip (Oooooh, the irony!), but there seem to be enough Pennsylvanians on the track that you suspect it was "Go Stand on a Railroad Track Day" in the state (at least, the film-makers kept it free of nuns, widows, orphans and puppies—although one shot of a raccoon crossing the track with the train hurtling at us in the background provoked an inappropriate fit of the giggles). It's carrying the afore-mentioned molten phynol "used in the manufacture of glue"—and in case we don't get it (a problem with this movie) it is reiterated that it is "very toxic, highly volatile" and the place the train will most likely derail is in the middle of Scranton on a curve that overlooks (conveniently) a large collection of fuel oil storage tanks. Now, ladies and gentlemen, that is bad city planning.

"Yeah, I read. I CAN read. Are you talking about genre?"

On top of that, the corporate heads irresponsibly want to stop it in the least expensive way possible, meaning that it probably won't work, and the two engineers also on a collision course with "a missile the size of the Chrysler Building" consist of a bitter company vet and a kid on his first day on the job with a court appearance that he has to make.

This is one over-loaded train. Scott pulls out all the stops—he doesn't have any brakes, either—skip-and ramp-editing the train footage to move it faster, swooping around the trains to give everything more momentum, constantly changing perspective to keep one ill at ease (until the two Mutt and Jeff engineers—Denzel Washington and Chris Pine—share a laugh—and a frame—half-way through the film, their conversations consist of separate shots of each speaking their lines from opposite perspectives of the engine compartment), it is a busy, busy movie. Credit to Scott, he keeps you informed what's going on so you never get lost in the spinning images. If anything, there is too much information—needlessly identifying various locations at the beginning when they're all 200 miles of each other, and not trusting any piece of information to not be re-iterated (after a terse conversation with the corporate HQ, do we need to have the gal in charge (Rosario Dawson) call her callous supervisor "an asshole?"). The entire plot is summed up a couple times during the movie ("So, what you're telling me is....") to the point where you're feeling slightly talked down to. Still, it is a bit of a fun ride for all the lapses in passenger-service.

"What is this, a book-club? Stop the damn train!"

One funny aspect of the film is its constant thrusting of Fox News coverage of the event (the film is a 20th Century Fox release and both entities are holdings of News Corp.). But it may be a bit of a miscalculation: the circling news helicopters buzzing the train seem to not only distract, but also interfere with the rescue efforts, to the point where they're actually one of the things hampering the struggles of the people to resolve the situation. Fox runs the risk of making one of their own divisions look poor in their attempt to cross-promote, derailing their own efforts throughout the film.

The Taking of Pelham 123

Written at the time of the film's release...

Or is that re-release?

"If You Don't Need it, Leave it!"
or
Hip-Hopping Right off the Tracks 

"The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" was a 1973 best-selling novel by John Godey that was snapped up for the movies almost immediately. The resulting 1974 film by the efficient Joseph Sargent benefited from an energetically entertaining script by Peter Stone and good performances by Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw. Stone (1776, Charade), being a student of Hitchcock, understood that a good thriller is more fun if you can enjoy it, rather than identify with it, and his script bristled with a sarcastic brio that played with the rich ethnicity of New Yawk. It was filmed again for television in 1999 with Edward James Olmos and Vincent D'Onofrio that nodded to advances in technology a bit, but lacked energy and suspense.  

There was no need for a further sequel, let alone one that would cost upwards of $100 million dollars—most of which seems to have gone to New York location taxes and helicopter rentals—but the Scott brothers evidently felt the need, this one directed by brother Tony in the same needlessly overt style that characterized his last few pictures. Scott's direction has always emphasized flash over substance, and here the film unnecessarily employs MTV cutting, streak shots, ramp-edits and cutesy sound design (a cranked up helicopter shot of a dawn New York skyline punctuates the sun blasting between skyscrapers with first two subway whooshes, than a horn) just to establish location.* This new version of The Taking of Pelham 123** is all over the top, set to a hip-hop beat, and it's only at the end that it's clear why Scott is being so aggressive with these techniques—he'll need them again to convey a sense of speed for a subway car supposedly out of control, but in the location shots looks soothingly like it would never leave the tracks. 

And if Stone's 1974 screenplay is an example of subtlety, the script by Brian Helgeland (and uncredited David Koepp) is a chunk of concrete, dropping so many f-bombs that it passes for humor in a script devoid of it—one of the very first examples of dialogue is a string of them in a sentence devoid of any meaning, but is merely an example of macho puffery, representing in microcosm both the script and film. Ethnicity is also made a factor in this script, but where Stone's punctured attitudes and stereotypes, in the 2009 script ethnicity defines you and can be used against you (and yet tries to imprint the message that you can "adapt"—interesting. Mixed message, and racistly judgmental...but interesting). 

The performances are credible, although I've always had problems seeing John Travolta as a bad guy (thoughtless, yes, but never deliberately malicious). Denzel Washington sinks into his role as everyman, caught in a circumstance he didn't walk to work foreseeing and doing his best to punt. James Gandolfini portrays a subway-riding mayor and the actor shrugs power. John Turturro has a smallish role as a police negotiator, and the highpoint of the film for me is a long held shot of Turturro reacting to the death of a hostage—his eyes portraying shock, and behind them simultaneously trying to pull himself out and consider his next step. 

The cumulative effect is numbness and dumbness. A firefight between perps surrounded by a ring of cops turns into a multi-camera squirt-a-thon nightmare. It looks impressive, you start to wonder how none of the police shoot any of the cops opposite them. For all the attempts to update, The Taking of Pelham 123 is a downgrade in quality, suspense and effectiveness. 

Let's see, the Scott brothers managed to mess up "The Andromeda Strain," and "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three," what other 70's thriller can they destroy?*** 

* In the "Rail Control Center," digital effects are used to make the display board more like a video game with zoomed graphics both in the display, and created for dramatic uses by cutting out little windows in the film itself. 

** Criminy, even the name is simplified and spoon-fed, lest anyone not "get" it. 

*** That question is already answered: Ridley Scott is shooting Robin Hood (2021 note: we'll post this next week...as well as another Denzel Washington "train" movie). Interesting story: the original script, called "Nottingham," focused on the Sheriff of Nottingham, caught in a struggle between a corrupt King and anarchists with the people's support. Russell Crowe was signed to star. In the interim, the script morphed into Robin being the Sheriff of Nottingham (?), now it's back to the old traditional—and umpteenth—version of "Robin Hood," and Maid Marion are the good guys and the King and Sheriff are bad guys. We've seen it before. Again, the question is: why? Probably because Hollywood can't get enough of the delicious irony of making money on a story about a guy who "steals from the rich and gives to the poor." 

It's too bad—I'd have liked to have seen "Nottingham," not another retread.

Deja Vu

John Oliver mentioned this one on Sunday's episode of "Last Week Tonight" —"'Bingo', indeed, Denzel!"—so we're going to go to the "WABAC Machine," via "The Time Tunnel," hit "Rewind" on my Delorean's "Flux Capacitor" and say this was written at the time of the film's release...

Once More into the Time-Breach, Dear Friends, 
or
Stop me if you've heard this one...

I took an "Introduction to Film" course in college (it's why I'm so danged qualified to write these things!). When we got to the study of Russian Cinema, the instructor discussed the differences between their film-making and Hollywood film-making. Russian films were big on "montage." They'd give you pieces of a puzzle and you'd add them up to form the story, and sometimes the juxtaposition of images would react against each other. A shot of a hillside under a sunny sky. A shot of wheat. Another shot of wheat. Another shot of LOTS of wheat. Black smoke appearing over the hillside. A large tire crunches the dirt. The grill of a tractor (for it is a tractor, comrade). People marching (with flags, yet!) beside the tractor in solidarity to the...well, you get the idea. There's a lot of coverage for a simple event.

By CONTRAST, the Hollywood film works like this: a shot of a hillside under a sunny sky; a plane enters the frame.

It blows up.

Déjà Vu is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and with him, you get the best of both film-making worlds--the long drawn out set-up AND something blowing up!! That's art you can take to the BANK, baby! And Bruckheimer does. You can pooh-pooh a lot of his films like Days of Thunder, Bad Boys, Armageddon and Con-Air (and his morgue-TV franchise "CSI: Anywhere," which this film resembles at times) but they draw in the crowds in amazing numbers, especially when Tony Scott (Ridley's brother) is directing (Top Gun, Crimson Tide,), and this is the latest collaboration between Denzel Washington, Scott and Bruckheimer. This film begins with the kind of "America in slo-mo" shots they usually reserve for commercials for something unpleasant like life insurance, or Dupont chemicals. The rule is if you've got kids leaping on the grass at half-speed no one will think anything but happy thoughts when you mention chemical fertilizer. 

Well, we get a lot of that as sailors and their families happily (and sloooowly) board a ferry boat. Then BOOM! It blows up in different speeds at different angles. Lots of coverage of the orange fireball. We've seen this sort of thing from Bruckheimer before. Prolonged normalcy, then instant carnage (is gonna get you). But it's just the beginning of the pattern of referrals, call-backs and out-right "steals" in this moebius strip of a movie.

Enter Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington). He's a crime scene investigator, but instead of being CSI, he's ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms). He's misplaced his partner someplace (yes, it's significant) so he's handling the investigation solo. But that's okay, because like CSI's Gil Grissom, he can spot molecules out of place on a beach filled with debris. In no time at all, he's scored a major lead in the case, while the cops take longer trying to explain where the coffee urn is--no, I'm not making that up. Washington is so ingratiating in the role (doing a grinning spin on his Inside Man investigator) that you're just happy he's on the case.*

Now Gil Grissom actually does show up, but if you blink once or twice you'll realize that it's merely Val Kilmer doing a Bill Petersen imitation. Kilmer's a gifted performer (The Doors, Tombstone, KissKissBangBang), but here he's a little bloated looking, like the love-child of John Travolta and Kurt Russell. 

Carlin's ability to see grains of sand out of place attracts his attention--and they make their way to the Guardian of Forever...or Project Tic-Toc...actually, it's a big terra-computer that can see back in time precisely four days and six hours and with it, the investigators hope to be able to track down the terrorists before they can launch the attack, but they don't know where to pick up the thread. That's Carlin's job and he naturally says, "Watch the girl." And before you can sing one verse of "Laura is the face in the misty light" the group is following her every move even into the shower. High Tech Stalking, but, hey, it's all in the past, after all, and it's (harrumph) "National Security." Now, most investigators fall in love with the object of the investigation (the "Laura" trope) when they see them across a room. This guy sees her across a coroner's slab. So to the creepy "stalking" aspect, perhaps we should add necromancy. Or "nec-romance."

I would say that to reveal more of the plot would spoil the movie, but, really, you've there's nothing new that hasn't been done in better and worse films and TV series. And you just know that once the subject of seeing into the past comes up, someone is actually going to try to...(you're probably way ahead of me AND the movie, which is a sort of reverse time-travel--which should upset the time-space continuum...or at least cause the lights to go dim in Robert McKee's screenwriting seminar!). Luckily for the folks involved, though in most movies of this sort, messing with the past can cause some unseen complications, in this movie there are no loose ends**--everything turns out just as it was before, but better. Well, except for the movie, of course. It's not that Déjà Vu is bad. It's just that it's cobbled together from bits of other movies, so, like the phenomenon for which it's named, you get the nagging feeling you've seen it all before. 

And you have.

Boom!

*With that lead comes a red herring--a woman has washed up on the beach--she's burned, but still beautiful--and she got there before the explosion and against the tide. And before you can say "we'll cross that Einstein-Rosen bridge when we come to it," Washington's Carlin inexplicably makes her the locus/focus of the case..and of course, he's right.

** No, I'm wrong. There is a loose end..with this review. Where's the cat-joke? At one point, going through the "girl's" apartment, Carlin feeds her by-now starving cat...which provoked a companion's retort after the movie, "That's 'Schrödinger's cat!'" And, of course, it is. It's also one of the best inside jokes that even Dennis Miller wouldn't have had the stones to use.