Unstoppable/ Man on Fire Double Pack [DVD] [2004]

Product Description Unstoppable Inspired by actual events, Unstoppable is an adrenaline rush fuelled by director Tony Scott's signature mark of propulsive action rooted in the reality of ordinary people placed in extraordinary circumstances. A veteran train engineer (Denzel Washington) and a young conductor (Star Trek's Chris Pine) race the clock to stop an unmanned runaway train--effectively a missile the size of a skyscraper--and prevent disaster in a heavily populated area. Man on Fire Hard-drinking, burnt-out CIA operative John Creasy (Denzel Washington) has given up on life until he's hired as a bodyguard to 9-year-old Pita Ramos (Dakota Fanning). But by bit, Creasy begins to reclaim his soul, but when Pita is kidnapped, Creasy's fire is released and he will stop at nothing to save her. Amazon.co.uk Review Unstoppable Orson Welles once said that directing a movie was like playing with the greatest toy train set in the world, and Tony Scott seems to be taking him literally. With the caboose of Scott's Taking of Pelham 123 barely in the distance, the filmmaker turned to Unstoppable, a train-chase picture loosely inspired by a true story (and perhaps just a smidgen by Runaway Train, the 1985 film based on an Akira Kurosawa script). At a Pennsylvania rail yard, some clueless workers let an unmanned train get loose, and the thing is soon hurtling across the countryside. Did we mention that it's pulling a few cars' worth of highly toxic material? Did you doubt it would be? Meanwhile, old-time engineer Denzel Washington and new conductor Chris Pine are making a routine run nearby--of course, in the movies, a routine run almost always turns into something wild. This odd couple is the only hope for stopping the runaway, while upper management dithers and an operations-room dispatcher (Rosario Dawson) spends most of the movie talking into her headset. Scott is an unabashed manipulator, and he yanks all the strings at his disposal for this whipped-up pageant: song cues, hype-filled reaction shots, stunts aplenty. It's all so aggressive, it makes you wish the exciting story could be allowed to tell itself. But the pulse does quicken, if you can turn your mind off for a while. And although it's faint praise, the movie is undeniably better than Pelham 123.--Robert Horton Man on Fire Style trumps substance in Man on Fire, a slick, brooding reunion of Crimson Tide star Denzel Washington and director Tony Scott. The ominous, crime-ridden setting is Mexico City, where a dour, alcoholic warrior with a mysterious Black Ops past (Washington) seeks redemption as the devoted bodyguard of a lovable 9-year-old girl (the precociously gifted Dakota Fanning), then responds with predictable fury when she is kidnapped and presumably killed. Prolific screenwriter Brian Helgeland (Mystic River, L.A. Confidential) sets a solid emotional foundation for Washington's tormented character, and Scott's stylistic excess compensates for a distended plot that's both repellently violent and viscerally absorbing. Among Scott's more distracting techniques is the use of free-roaming, comic-bookish subtitles... even when they're unnecessary! Adapted from a novel by A.J. Quinnell and previously filmed as a 1987 vehicle for Scott Glenn, Man on Fire is roughly on par with Scott's similar 1990 film Revenge, efficiently satisfying Washington's incendiary bloodlust under a heavy blanket of humid, doom-laden atmosphere. --Jeff Shannon