Unstoppable (starring Denzel and Captain Kirk - the young one)

You know the saying "It was like a train wreck but I couldn't stop watching it"?  That's literally how to describe this movie.  The whole thing was so formulaic and predictable that once it started down the tracks there weren't any surprises or twists in the road. And is it bad that everytime young Captain Kirk was on the screen I was waiting for him to say something from Star Trek?  That's called typecasting, right?  Oh well, if he makes a few more movies like this I'm sure I'll forget about him completely.

Here's the basic story:  a low level railroad employee (played with awesome unintentional comedy by "Randy" from My Name Is Earl) puts a train in full speed ahead mode then steps out of the cab (it's a railroad thing, you wouldn't understand).  This starts the train rocketing down the tracks toward a town of 750,000 people, where it will hit a sharp curve and derail.  Oh yeah, there's some kind of highly dangerous (flammable?  radioactive? they never really say) liquid on the train just to up the fear factor a little.  Anyway, the railroad tries everything they can to stop the runaway train but, of course, the only ones who can do that are our heroes, two very brave but sympathetically flawed characters.  (Spoiler alert - in case you've never seen a movie before and can't guess how this ends) These guys do all sorts of heroic things (but not before spending over half the movie just driving backwards in their engine very fast ... it's really as unexciting as that sentence made it sound) to catch the speeding runaway.  Once they've caught up to a high stakes game of tug of war starts between the little engine that maybe could and the big bad runaway.  Of course, despite numerous close calls, they eventually mount the engine, shut down the runaway, and save all of humankind.

The actors in this movie do a really good job and almost pull it off, but the script totally kills them.  It's straight out of acting school 101.  Stop me if you've heard of these story ideas before:

• Long time employee is done wrong by his company but he rises above to save that same damn evil company
• Rookie gets paired with grizzled veteran (they might as well have called these guys "partners")
• Old timer with experience has to put up with Silver Spoon rookie
• Silver Spoon rookie turns out to be a natural talent
• Old timer's street smarts trump corporate stuffed shirts "rules"
• Young hero has relationship problems that get magically solved by his bravery
• Father has a poor relationship with his children that gets magically solved by his bravery
• Ridiculous upping of the ante and overhyping of consequences if heroes fail
• "James Bond villain" solutions to all problems that ensure they don't get solved until the end of the movie
• Corporations are evil and only care about the stock price
• Local employee dares to go against the corporate monolith

I think you get the idea.  I'm not saying this movie doesn't have exciting parts or a decent premise, it's just tough to believe that it's that hard to derail a runaway train.  Doesn't everyone know that if you put a coin or matchbox car or any other tiny children's toy on the tracks it'll derail a whole train?  No?  That was just me that believed that?  Oh well ...  But seriously, couldn't they have just cut out a 50 yard portion of track?

Anyway, there are way too many random characters thrown in as well.  There's a head welder whose whole role seems to be to drive really fast from crossing to crossing so he can watch the train rush past and curse under his breath.  There's a know-it-all from the Federal Railroad Association, etc. etc.  Maybe the director just has a lot of friends who have never gotten to be in a movie before.  This whole movie could have been about 20 minutes shorter (a complaint I'm having more and more these days - where have all the good editors gone?) and it would have been much better.  This movie would have been called "Unwatchable" without Denzel.  I give the script 1 star and Denzel 1.5 stars.