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Pretentious (Action) Movie Alert: The Five Questions Left Unanswered By Unstoppable

Chris celebrated his birthday in style this weekend with the Blogulator crew. Like one would expect from an expert in awesomely bad movies like Chris is, he took the opportunity to invite us all to see the #2 movie in America, raking in a respectable $23.5M in its first weekend of release: Unstoppable. (No, not the Wesley Snipes film, the one starring Denzel Washington and Chris Pine and directed by Tony Scott.)

Boom.

Now, I'm not going to waste much time giving this film a proper review. Reason being, there is very little to review. You see, in said film, like suggested in the trailers and promotional material for the film, it's about a train. That goes fast. And is out of control. And has to be stopped. One might even say that said train is "unstoppable." Thankfully (or, sadly?) no character once noted the "unstoppableness" of the train, but Rosario Dawson did mention once that it is carrying explosives that make the train like a missle the size of the Chrysler building. (THE CHRYSLER, BUILDING, FOLKS!)

That said, I was greatly entertained by this film, and is the most fun I had in a movie theater since I saw The Room at Chris's bachelor party.

Yet, there were numerous unanswered, spoiler-heavy questions from this film that plague my mind now. Like:

1) How were the local newscasters able to get computer animated depictions of the train so quickly?
Nevermind the fact that there are approximately 43 different local news stations that have on-the-spot live action news teams in southern Pennsylvania, because that much was made obvious. I suppose if these action news teams are so quick to the news, the stations must also have computer animators on call 24/7 in the case of, say, a runaway train that is like a missle the size of the Chrysler building.

2) How hungry was Ethan Suplee?
I feel kind of bad for Ethan Suplee, having typecast himself originally in Mallrats and other various Kevin Smith films, because now instead of being a fat slob who hangs out with teenagers and young 20-somethings at the mall, he is now typecast as a 30-something working class fat slob. Side note: how cruel was it that the many other guys who could have possibly helped him stop the train in the first place just laughed and clapped? It's as if the audience was inside the film at that point. Whoa, trippy.

3) Why did Denzel Washington reply to Chris Pine that his daughters work at Hooters instead of telling him which college they go to?
I know the answer: because that gave director Tony Scott an excuse to follow up that scene with a under-the-butt shot at a Hooters restaurant of Denzel's daughters. Right after we all learned that they're barely 18, as Chris aptly pointed out. Sexy AND creppy!

4) What, exactly, was the long-haired hippy dude's job? And why was the press so quick to have a press conference with him?
I was never totally clear on how this dude had a job with the trains, or how he became an awesome truck driver near the end. And I was even less clear about why the press was fawning over him after everything was good, ESPECIALLY BECAUSE THE NEWS BROADCASTERS HAD JUST SPENT AN HOUR LITERALLY ONLY PAYING ATTENTION TO DENZEL AND CHRIS PINE!!!!!!!!

5) Why did Chris Pine's wife so easily decide to take him back at the end?
Finally, I know Chris Pine was supposed to be the good guy, who learned to work hard (despite his continual cell phone use, which was exasperating to no end, although Denzel had a few cell-phone-on-the-job moments himself. In fact, most everybody here was using a cell phone at inappropriate times.) But from what we learned in these cell phone conversations, his wife was leaving him because he kept spying on her text messages, getting all rampantly paranoid about everything. His total a-holeish attitude at the beginning of the movie also didn't give us a whole lot to feel good about him. In fact, I'm not exactly sure why he was a hero here at all.

Still, I highly recommend this film to anybody who likes big, dumb movies. Because it is big, and it is dumb, and it is Unstoppable.

This SNL trailer spoof, by the way, is eerily accurate to the actual film. "He's insulting me and I'm allowing it!"

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  1. Blogger chris | 3:04 PM |  

    And finally (SPOILER ALERT)...

    6) Why didn't they just have someone that a) wasn't fat or b) didn't have a broken foot jump onto the train from a well-driven speeding vehicle?

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