Wordsmoker

The other day, between hours spent in bed naked apart from my ceremonial golden antlers, I clicked on stuff on the internet for a while and came across the trailer for the new Tony Scott movie “Unstoppable”. I’ve watched the trailer for Tony Scott’s movie “Unstoppable” three times now, and I’m still not convinced that Tony Scott’s “Unstoppable” isn’t some wonderful send-up of Tony Scott movies. It actually beggars belief.

Of course, I’m going to prattle on a bit about it, but you don’t need to read this bit right now. You can skip to the end where you can see the actual trailer for this actual motion picture. Now, I’m not one to request that one or many of you gentle readers actually leave your apartments or places of work or the bus station where you dance for spare change and actually go out and kill someone (apart from my long-running campaign to rid the world of Charlie Fucking Sheen), but watching the trailer for Tony Scott’s movie “Unstoppable” really makes me want to issue a Wordsmoker fatwa. I really don’t mind Tony Scott, or his infinitely-more-talented brother Ridley, so what I’m really hoping for is that one or some of you just kidnap him and keep him comfortable in a big box for a long while so he can’t get near any film equipment until far into his dotage.

Tony Scott’s “Unstoppable” is really that bad. Kidnap the director bad. Keep him in a big box until he’s really old and infirm and worries more about dietary roughage than production schedules or helicopter availability bad.

I don’t want to sound cruel. You can punch holes in Tony Scott’s Anti-Film-Making Box so he can breathe.

He just can’t leave.

My reasoning is sound and just. Tony Scott must stop making movies. Because Tony Scott’s “Unstoppable” looks like the worst thing ever to grace the screen not featuring Miley Cyrus. It stars Denzel Washington and Chris Pine. Seeing them in this, you’ll want to push both of them off a high bridge onto a parade of excitable elephants below, so that Denzel Washington and Chris Pine are remembered fondly as “those two actors who got pushed off a bridge by unknown assailants into the path of a herd of especially trampy elephants”, and not “those two guys in that fucking awful Unstoppable movie, fuck me that was awful, what an awful fucking movie, it was awful.”

You know the kicker? The part that inspires me to ask you to kidnap Tony Scott and put him in a big, non-film-making box? The tagline:

INSPIRED BY TRUE EVENTS

Yep. Do you want to know what “true events” it was inspired by?

A train got loose and rolled down the track at 10mph
and a train driver jumped in the cab and stopped it.

Nowhere in the actual story was there a huge train full of laughing schoolchildren coming the other way. There was no horse-box on the tracks. No helicopters. Certainly no highly explosive gases carried in eight freight cars. No police cars tearing alongside it. No marksmen shooting at the wheels. No helicopters. No men dangling from helicopters trying to land on the train. No men dangling from helicopters trying to land on the train and failing and crashing through the train windows.

Which is all okay and good. Hollywood not only takes liberties with the truth when counting net profits, it also does it with the truth. We all know this. What really rankles is the Random Cliche Generator Tony Scott has hired to spice up the actual, dull story. Let’s count the tropes!

• Young Hotshot Train Driver vs Old Experienced Train Driver
• Young Hotshot Train Driver Has Marriage Problems And Young Family
• Old Experienced Train Driver Has Beautiful Daughters

And this is before we actually get into the “story”. Denzel Washington has to deliver lines like the ones he so wonderfully delivered in “Training Day”. ONLY THIS TIME IT’S ABOUT FUCKING TRAINS. CHOO-CHOO FUCKING TRAINS. TRAINS. HE DRIVES A FUCKING TRAIN. A CHOO-CHOO TRAIN. He makes it sound like he’s dropping into Kabul wearing only a Hello Kitty mask and armed with a blunt fork. HE’S DRIVING A FUCKING TRAIN. CHOO-FUCKING-CHOO.

A TRAIN.

• The Parade Of Innocents

Yes – the aforementioned schoolchildren. LOOK HOW INNOCENT THEY ARE. SCHOOLCHILDRENS. INNOCENT. For once I’d actually like to see a film-maker use this particular trope and actually have them all die in a huge fucking fireball. That would be awesome. I mean, no-one wants to see schoolchildren die in a big trainy fireball, but c’mon – surely it’s time? DO IT. Fuck with our expectations. If the train full of schoolchildren actually do die in “Unstoppable”, then you’re free to let Tony Scott out of his box.

• The Gorgeous Woman In Charge With The Exposition Dummies

No, even Rosario Dawson can save any of this shit. Same as when she was in that one with the evil computer chasing Shia LeBouf. At least in that one she wore a sexy business suit. Not in this. BUT WATCH AS SHE HAS TO MAKE SENSE OF IT ALL NOW, AND STANDS PROBABLY TEARFUL AND FEELING OUT OF HER DEPTH IN THE LADIES’ TOILET BUT DON’T WORRY, SHE’LL COME THROUGH BECAUSE NONE OF THE SCHOOLCHILDREN ARE GOING TO DIE TODAY.

• Cop Cars Flipping Over

Oh, there’ll be plenty of that shit, don’t you worry. I actually wonder how any policemen capture criminals, what with their means of transport so incredibly prone to flipping.

• The Uncaring Boss

He’s fat and balding and is uncaring. His advice will be ignored by the two heroes, because he is the boss and is fat and balding. He’s lost touch, this fat, balding boss. HE’S LOST TOUCH WITH THE TRAINS.

Again, this is the most awful thing I’ve seen in a long while. What differentiates it from true parody? Well, only a couple of additions, and you’d be there…

• A train carrying nuns. One of the nuns has a dark secret. Another one of the nuns works for the CIA. It’s the nun’s last day working for the CIA.
• An ex-football player. On a train. Or who maybe is blind, and wanders onto the track looking for his sick dog. He dies just at the end of the second act. The dog lives and because of the selfless act he’s just witnessed, goes onto to save an orphan in the sequel where two runaway trains mate to produce a giant runaway train, which is the size of a strip mall and has 20,000 people riding on it and a capacity for hatred unheralded in any known means of public transportation.
• An alcoholic signalmen. He’s hit by the train, but his last act is a moment of redemption, as he pulls a lever, maybe saving the nuns.

In summation – Denzel Washington really needs to get the fuck away from Tony Scott. I thought “Deja Vu” was an aberration, but no. I wonder if he’ll do the same un-nerving smile for no reason thing he did through that pile of crap?

HERE’S THE TRAILER. LOOKIT DA LIDDLE SCHOOLCHILDREN!!! OH HOW THEY LAUGH!!! WHAT COULD POSSIBLY HAPPEN???