![unstoppable movie denzel washington unstoppable movie denzel washington](http://filmjourneys.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/denzel-unstoppable.jpg)
That miss shook the actor up, but they reset, and he did it again.
![unstoppable movie denzel washington unstoppable movie denzel washington](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2010/11/07/arts/07UNSTOPPABLE-1/UNSTOPPABLE-1-jumbo.jpg)
“On the first jump, missed,” Scott said in his commentary. That scene when he's running on top of the train?Īnd Chris Pine couldn't let Denzel do it all on his own. That meant Denzel needed seven stunt doubles but even had to do some of his own precarious work. “Scheduling was a nightmare,” Scott said in the film's commentary.Ĭompounding this, the director was not a green screen guy. If they missed it, they had to be loaded onto flatbeds and driven backward to the start. One take over the only two or so miles they got in some places.Īnd how do you get a train to hit a mark? They could shoot maybe three takes over 10 miles. Scott had to also mind how many miles of track he had access to because trains took a long time to reset. Production began in September but would shoot past Christmas, meaning they would go from leaves on trees to barren forests. There were small things, like making sure the scenery matched the story. There were so many details that went into making Unstoppable a hit. He brought along his longtime collaborator Denzel Washington and they flew to Pennsylvania to get started. No one thought he would want to get involved, but after reading it and loving it, Scott was on board. The script was sent to Tony Scott, who had just done a train movie. It was the true story of the CSX-8888 incident of May 2001, a runaway train carrying chemicals that could destroy a region. Fox President Tom Rothman called him to tell him so, but directors kept coming and going. He knew he had a great script in Unstoppable. Spy Game and Man of Fire were his instant hits, showcasing the mastery and fast editing he was known for in the 90s.īut Domino, Deja Vu, and Pelham put his career in reverse.Įnter Mark Bomback, a writer who had some success but was looking for the thing that really changed his perception in town. The 2000s saw him attaching to a ton of scripts but only making a handful that would stand the test of time. They were there to shoot a movie no one had heard of, a little thriller called Unstoppable, directed by the legend Tony Scott.Īt the time, Scott was coming off The Taking of Pelham 123 remake, which was a flop at the box office and didn't hit any critic lists. It was not unthinkable to see Chris Pine eating sticky buns at Ye Old College Diner (a real place!) or catch a glimpse of Denzel Washington enjoying a late dinner at The Corner Room. When I was a junior in college, Hollywood came to Centre County, Pennsylvania, and set up shop. With his usual hyperactive eye and ear, he slams scenes and shots into each other, hurls Washington atop of the speeding freight car and makes us forget, if only for 90 minutes, that life was never really this exciting.įor show times, see: 98 minutes long, Tony Scott's last film, Unstoppable, is a movie paced as fast as its subject matter. The real trick here, and it's something of a minor miracle, is how Scott shoots and cuts the action together. And so, against the merciless company bosses who have rejected him, and an economy that has ground him down, Frank decides, nonetheless, with classic Denzel gravitas, to pursue the runaway in his own engine car and save the day and the lives of thousands.
UNSTOPPABLE MOVIE DENZEL WASHINGTON DRIVER
However, Hollywood was never a community to let mundane reality stand in the way of a high-octane blockbuster, and thus we have the story of an ageing freight driver called Frank (Washington) who is working through the last three weeks of his forced retirement when the eponymous "unstoppable" train whizzes by with a deadly payload of chemicals and a potentially cataclysmic crash-point in the highly populated town of Stanton, Pennsylvania. In fact, those viewers who are already aware of the news story itself might well be nagged throughout by the persistent memory that, well, nothing actually happened. Here the central story, from Ohio in 2001, of a real-life driverless freight train that didn't actually crash and was eventually slowed safely to a halt is hardly the stuff of high drama. Starring: Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, Rosario DawsonĪ typically charismatic performance from the leading man Denzel Washington and some propulsive filmmaking fireworks from the director Tony Scott transform a surprisingly lumpen premise into satisfying cinematic spectacle.