The Tom’s Guide verdict: ‘Unstoppable’ (2010)
Rating: 4/5 stars
Verdict: “They don’t make movies like this anymore” is a common line in the film industry, but they really don’t make movies like “Unstoppable” anymore. It’s a movie with a decent-sized budget that didn’t make a massive profit, but it delivers star power in the form of Denzel Washington and Chris Pine. More importantly, though, it delivers an enjoyable movie loaded with tense moments in under 100 minutes of runtime. It’s here for a good time, not a long time, and it’s a really good time.
Where to watch: Buy or rent “Unstoppable” on Amazon
I’m watching “Unstoppable” this week in my yearlong Denzel Watchathon and while I’ve seen it before, I’m treating this action thriller as if it were my first time watching it. I’m not sure I’ve seen it within the past 10 years. If I had, it was definitely on cable (probably TNT or FX), and I’m sure I came in halfway through and then couldn’t turn it off.
This type of movie used to be common in Hollywood. Your cable or live TV provider has an on-demand library littered with rewatchable popcorn flicks like “Unstoppable.” The Ringer’s Bill Simmons has created an entire podcast around dissecting these films. And if you listen to it, as I do, you know there aren’t a ton of movies he examines that are newer than this Denzel Washington and Chris Pine-led disaster movie. It’s because Hollywood simply doesn’t make them anymore.
If you take a glance at the Wikipedia page for “Unstoppable,” it’s easy to see why. With a budget possibly as high as $100 million, it only brought in $167.8 million at the box office. That’s a number many movies would kill for today, but it’s also, according to Hollywood’s accounting methods, a loss.
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So, instead, studios make superhero movies and intellectual property-driven blockbusters that have larger budgets but can bring in hundreds of millions, if not billions. Even if one flops, one hitting more than makes up for it on the balance sheet.
That’s a shame, though, because I can’t remember the last time I had as much fun watching a Marvel or DC movie as I did watching “Unstoppable.” Maybe “Thunderbolts*,” which has some similarly tense action-thriller moments. But even then, I’d probably reach for this movie first. It’s a very simple premise: a runaway train goes fast; our heroes need to stop it.
Sure, there are extra stakes. There’s an (absurdly fictional) town twice the size of Pittsburgh (that somehow also looks like a quaint rust-belt city) directly in the path of this deadly train. It’s filled with toxic chemicals, which is sort of a hat on a hat. It’s even based on a true story, albeit with many details changed. But “Unstoppable” doesn’t need all of that. It just needs Denzel and Pine in a race against time to stop an unstoppable force.
If you want to watch this movie before you read on, you can buy or rent it on Amazon. Unfortunately, it’s not currently available on the best streaming services or the best free streaming services, nor is it available to watch on demand on any of the best live TV streaming services.
Malcolm McMillan
Malcolm has been with the Streaming team at Tom’s Guide since 2023, reviewing dozens of movies each year so you don’t have to watch the bad ones.
This movie is all killer, no filler … mostly
As I mentioned, “Unstoppable” is based on a true story. In 2001, an error made by an engineer caused CSX 8888 to accelerate without an operator and speed down a train track in Ohio, just south of Toledo.
In our story, the setting is moved to a series of fictional towns in Pennsylvania. The train still goes rogue due to user error, and it’s still carrying molten phenol, a toxic ingredient in many products, including glue. But now, there’s an added wrinkle.
In the city of Stanton, there’s an elevated curve set conveniently next to some fuel tanks. If the train isn’t stopped before hitting that curve, it will derail, hit the tanks, and cause a massive (toxic) explosion and a disaster costing hundreds of millions of dollars and possibly hundreds of thousands of lives.
Tasked with stopping the runaway train, dubbed “Triple 7 (or 777), are … well, there are actually a lot of people tasked with stopping the train. First, it’s the engineer who made the train go rogue in the first place and his conductor (Ethan Suplee and T.J. Miller). Then, a helicopter carrying a former Marine (Ryan Ahern) and an engine driven by a veteran train engineer (David Warshofsky) try to slow the train further down the tracks, but to no avail.
That just leaves Frank (Washington) and Will (Pine). These two were moving freight cars on the same line as 777 and nearly crashed into the train-turned-speeding-bullet. Now, they’re trying to catch Triple 7 before it hits Stanton while going 70 miles per hour — in reverse.
That’s pretty much the long and short of this disaster thriller. There are additional storylines regarding both Frank and Will’s families, but they’re just there to get you more emotionally invested in the outcome for both characters. It’s not really necessary to the movie. This film is all about the tension caused by a speeding train blasting through intersections, nearly killing people. That’s then compounded by the additional tension of whether our dynamic duo gets to 777 in time, and once there, can they stop it before it takes out Stanton?
Verdict: Watch ‘Unstoppable,’ then go watch ‘Plane’
For the answer to that question, you’ll need to watch “Unstoppable,” though I suspect you’ve already reached your conclusions. I spent my hard-earned money to rent this film, and I promise, all $3.99 of it was money well spent.
Once you’re done, though, I recommend adding “Plane” to your watchlist. This 2023 action thriller is similar to Denzel and Pine’s 2010 film in a lot of ways. They’re both essentially two-handers for large swathes of their stories; in “Plane,” it’s Gerard Butler and Mike Colter, admittedly a notable step down in star power. They’re both races against time where the stakes are life and death. And there are boardroom sequences in both where we cut to executives determining the financial benefits of saving lives. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that “Plane” rips off “Unstoppable” for its boardroom scenes, at least partially.
Both movies also fall under the category of rewatchable movies that Hollywood just doesn’t make anymore. Streaming both will take you just over 200 minutes of your time. You just have to decide whether to start with the B-movie version (“Plane”) or the real deal (“Unstoppable”) first.
Buy or rent “Unstoppable” on Amazon now
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