Tony Scott has made a career of stylish action motion pictures that surpass your average extravagant blockbuster. However with Unstoppable he doesn't quite pull of his usual sleek, vigorous narrative. It is not Scott's technical or natural skill for the action genre that fails to deliver necessarily, but rather it is Mark Bomback's screenplay that falls short.
If we take a look at Scott's previous work it is evident that his latest movie starring Denzel Washington and Chris Pine lacks any clever dialogue or witty remarks. Scotts collaboration with Quentin Tarantino for True Romance conveyed a superbly directed action film with a fantastic story. It also contained one of the greatest scenes in the past 25 years between Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper and a poignant ending. The Last Boy Scout written by Shane Black and Greg Hicks brought about a great array of one liners and is Scott's funniest movie.
I was really excited for Unstoppable and even though it was obvious that it could never compare to the enthralling suspense of Jan de Bont's Speed, I still was expecting some clever dialogue or even smart one liners, but unfortunately I was disappointed. The casting of Washington and Pine seemed like a superb choice, but the story moves to fast to let them to really quarrel or grow to respect each other in a pace that felt right. Their relationship moved too fast for any real character development. Bruce Willis and Damon Wayons' characters in The Last Boy Scout was an excellent display of conflict and uniting between two strong personalities. The last fourty-five minutes was quite exciting with the two protagonists attempting to stop the "unstoppable", but the characters and dialogue is just too timid and plain. The humour was too cringing, where as with a movie like Speed we are given cheese because we are willing to except that in order to get a real thrilling experience.
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