UNSTOPPABLE

RYAN: I had no interest in seeing Unstoppable, the new Denzel Washington/Chris Pine movie; and then to top it off, it had to suck.

CAROLINE: It was pretty preposterous. It’s directed by Tony Scott who has done a lot of other action movies with Denzel including Man on Fire and Deja Vu, but I really can’t imagine how the two of them decided this movie was a good one to reunite on. The script is just awful.

RYAN: It’s atrocious and cheesy. I liked Rosario Dawson, but her lines are so bad.

CAROLINE: The audience was laughing at the movie, not with it.

RYAN: What offended me even more than the dialogue though was the camerawork and editing. It felt like they were trying to make this movie a horror film where the monster is a train.

CAROLINE: A few of the action scenes were exciting, and I’m sure Denzel had dollar signs in his eyes when he signed on for this, but it’s just not a very good movie.

RYAN: It definitely makes your adrenaline pump at times because of the sound design and the tension, but it felt cheap to me. It wasn’t good storytelling.

CAROLINE: The problems started at the very beginning, where it’s assumed that we all give a crap about trains, train jargon, train yards and how they operate. None of these topics are remotely interesting to me, so I was bored for the first 20 minutes. I was like, “Cut to the chase!” Then it got slightly better when the drama kicked in, but the only time I was truly engaged was for the inevitable heroic rescue at the end. You just know Denzel is gonna save the day.

RYAN: It was very predictable, and I was totally turned off by the melodrama and sappiness. Of course Chris Pine’s character is dealing with marital strife, and someone has died of cancer. And then the stuff with the train is just ludicrous; it’s rushing toward a highly populated area carrying explosives? There’s a train heading right for it carrying 150 children? There are horses on the tracks? I mean, come on. We get it; disaster is imminent.

CAROLINE: [laughs’ It was just silly. And what’s even sillier is the millions of dollars it’s sure to make at the box office this weekend. I actually heard a few people behind me saying how much they liked the movie. I guess people love stuff like this, but I found it ridiculous.

RYAN: Maybe it’ll have a big first weekend and then drop off after that.

CAROLINE: We haven’t seen Chris Pine much since he broke out in Star Trek, but he apparently knows how to pick a blockbuster.

RYAN: There’s another boy movie out tomorrow called Skyline, which is more sci-fi; but if that’s bad too it makes me wonder whey this is such a bum weekend for the movies. This is supposed to be Oscar season!

— BOTTOM LINE —

CAROLINE: I’d say about 90% of this movie bored me to tears, and the rest was exciting but totally over the top. I normally love Denzel and think he’s a fabulous actor, obviously, but this material was so beneath him. When an action movie is boring, you know you’ve got a problem.

RYAN: [laughs’ Seriously. It’s just a ridiculous, annoying movie. I was totally distracted and turned off by the way it was shot. I tried to fall asleep with limited success. The only thing fun about it was commiserating with you about having to see it.

— RATING —