Unstoppable

Unstoppable (2010) is about the effort to halt an accelerating freight train with nobody at the controls, and it is based on a real event. During a manoeuvre a locomotive gets loose. There are hazardous chemicals in the cars and the train is heading for a populated town. An engineer close to retirement and a conductor on his first day try to catch it from behind with their own train and stop it. The real event happened in Ohio on 15 May 2001. CSX locomotive number 8888 left the Walbridge yard with nobody at the controls: the hostler had stepped off the slow moving train to correct a misaligned switch, believing he had set the braking system properly. It ran for close to two hours with 47 cars at speeds up to 85 kilometres an hour; two of the cars carried molten phenol. It was finally stopped by a locomotive that caught up and coupled to the rear car, and when it had slowed to about eighteen kilometres an hour a trainmaster ran alongside, climbed aboard and shut the engine down. The film keeps that outline and enlarges the danger. It was shot with real trains; there is almost no digital work. It was Tony Scott's last film; he died two years later. It was his fifth and final collaboration with Denzel Washington. The telling is plain and never stops for its ninety odd minutes. It runs 98 minutes. Good for: tension, true events, and unadorned action. Less good for: there is no character depth and the film runs on a single idea.