So here's the setup...
You've got a young guy doing any job he can to get by. He's got issues with his missus and his old timer colleagues give him a hard time because they think he's been fed with a silver spoon his whole life (plus the boss is his uncle or something and is gunning for their jobs). Step up Chris Pine repeating his cocksure young buck performance from the Star Trek reboot.
Then you've got the old head, the veteran of the railroad (who we later find out has that old chestnut of a line to deliver "I only got x number of days til retirement"), just trying to pay the bills. He's a single father having lost the love of his life to cancer. He's got two girls growing up too fast for his liking (who work at Hooters to pay their way through college) but he barely gets a chance to see them. Hello Denzel Washington playing a way too familiar role.
Both these guys just want to do their job, get paid and get home safely everyday but then some lazy douche (Ethan Suplee in a classic bit of typecasting) stuffs up and sets loose an unmanned 39-car train travelling at top speeds on your rail network and you're the only ones who can track it down and attempt to stop it. Doesn't that just ruin your day!
Welcome to another Tony Scott wall of sound production. Seriously this thing is loud. Hurtling trains, screeching metal on metal, explosions, choppers, fast cars. You want it, you got it. Tony Scott is anything but subtle. Strangely I got a real feel for the sound design of this film (which was academy nominated) by attending a panel discussion led by the film's composer Harry Gregson-Williams who basically had the same feeling when it came to the noise assaulting the audience in this film. The whole film feels like everything you've seen before. Supporting our two stars that are on the ride of their lives is the sexy voice on the other end of the comms system guiding them through this debacle, played by Rosario Dawson. Joining her in the control room is the junky from "The Departed" Kevin Corrigan playing the safety rep for the railroad (and requisite technical boffin in any kind of disaster film) reeling off stats and factoids aplenty. You've got the dad from Transformers (Kevin Dunn) sweating in the boardroom trying to balance the demands of the train company execs with reducing collateral damage along the mainline. And lastly you've got a whole bunch of nameless concerned onlookers in various locales (bars, offices, etc) watching the disaster play out in real time on live tv brought to you by the good people at Fox News.
In keeping with the disaster genre there is a bit of standard fare mid-crisis bonding between the two leads who only earlier in the day were at each other's throats. Also some mushy reunions post-climax.
Somewhere about half way through this I realised I almost prefers terrorists on a train rather than this struggle against an anonymous mechanical force. I suppose that is this script's (by Mark Bomback) point of difference to other railroad disaster films like "Runaway Train", "Under Siege 2" and "The Taking of Pelham 123". Also, the fact the potential disaster basically played out in real time.
It certainly seems odd that Denzel would take another train employee role in another Tony Scott train film, coming off their collaboration of only a year earlier "The Taking of Pelham 123". I never really felt the tension that this film was supposed to be evoking. Because the runaway train is empty there is less at stake, regardless of the fact it was headed towards a township of 100,000 people. This is probably because we never really got to know the people of that town who were at risk. Plus never got to see an example of the destructive force of the cargo aboard the loose locomotive.
I really disliked the lame epilogue character bites that are generally found in films of this ilk – those based on true events. Although this film is apparently (following later research) based on the CSX 8888 incident I feel like it would have been better served to have taken even more creative licence with the events of that day. Spoiler alert: I somehow feel I was denied a fiery deathball of a finale but oh well, you can't win all the time. I did however enjoy the comic relief character - Ned the welder (Lew Temple from not much I've ever heard of). 