Unstoppable

Tony Scott. Denzel Washington. A train. Motorcades of police cars, some of which flip over for no adequately explained reason. So, it's The Taking Of Pelham 123 again? Well, nearly, almost, sort of.

In this instance, it's The Taking of Pelham 123, but John Travolta has been tippexed out. In his place is... an empty railway cab. The threat, then is not that the train is stationary, and the hostage taker is going to kill everyone, but that the train is moving, and the train is going to kill everybody. Because it's got a few trucks of molten phenol in there, and that's pretty inflammable and toxic. When it crashes, it's going to kill everybody nearby, and it's going to crash because it's heading for a tight curve in a town in Pennsylvania where it's going to fall off the tracks, and onto a conveniently placed fuel depot.

Obviously, this isn't everybody's favoured outcome, including Denzel Washington and Chris "James T Kirk" Pine, who are the driver and conductor of another train on the runaway train's track. After a number of abortive attempts by the train company to stop or derail the train, it's up to them to catch up to the train, and stop it. All of which gives us plenty of excuses for standard Tony Scott crashes and explosions. Denzel Washington is that guy you know from Denzel Washington movies, the brave veteran who calmly does what it takes, and Chris Pine follows suit, as the rookie who'll bravely step up to the plate. Both of them turn in charming, likeable performances, which give the film a lot of warmth.

On the one side, this film is massively, massively predictable. Really, I say to you "Tony Scott film about a runaway train, starring Denzel Washington", and what your mind just sketched out as the likely outcome of that is exactly right. On the other hand, if your mind told you that it was going to be a thrilling rollercoaster ride of stunts and derring-do then it would be exactly right too. People are going to attempt to jump onto speeding cars from trains, and onto speeding trains from cars. People are going to attempt to couple and uncouple trains, and find themselves dangling precariously. Everything you expect will be there, everything you hope for will be there. It's pretty clear what's on offer from the start, and it delivers.

One thing I really do like is that there's no real bad guy here. There's a few murky bits of corporate types making decisions to save money rather than save lives, but ultimately, it's all caused not by the usual European terrorists in black polo necks with German made submachineguns, but by a frickin' idiot who works in the train yard, who accidentally does exactly what you shouldn't do while moving a train around a train yard. Blue collar idiot causes problem, blue collar heroes save the day. And apparently, this whole thing was inspired by real events, which I'm sure were way less dramatic, and far fewer police cars mysteriously flipped over while cornering, but it's nice to know that basically, it really does happen that occasionally, you have to chase a train full of dangerous chemicals with another train.

Highly entertaining nonsense, that you won't particularly remember in a week's time, but then if you find yourself needing to remember it, don't worry. Whatever your brain makes up to fill the gap will be mostly right.