Unstoppable's genius lies in its no-nonsense simplicity. It's wisely light on plot, there are no superfluous supporting characters, we only find out the backstories of its two leads (and even then, only in brief smalltalk during huge action scenes, if you can believe it) and it is relentlessly breakneck-paced. Unencumbered by all that boring "talking" and "time-wasting character scenes," you might even say its 'splosions agenda is unstoppable (sorry).

The movie begins with a railroad employee accidentally getting out of a train full of hazardous materials he's put in full throttle down the tracks (as you do), and doesn't let up for a second as everybody from the railroad company, the military, Denzel Washington, the cops, some horses, a pick-up truck manned by a guy who is sure to be the next Sam Rockwell, a paratrooper, Captain Kirk and about a dozen insane stunt doubles Tony Scott convinced to run on top of a speeding train manage to slow it down before it derails on a tight curve and nukes a densely populated area.

It's fantastic in that it just doesn't care about anyone who isn't Denzel Washington or Chris Pine's characters. The movie's whole attitude is just train time, all the time. Like, Rosario Dawson is a manager at the railroad, has a lot of screentime and is at the forefront of this quest to stop the train, but she has zero lines that aren't specifically about the task at hand. Same goes for everyone else. It's amazing. If Michael Bay had directed this movie it would be close to three hours long, and there'd be six auxiliary characters that have nothing to do with anything whose families we'd have to meet and be expected to care about in between the train smashing up horse trailers and being shot at by sheriffs deputies (yes, the sheriffs deputies thought that would work), when the train smashing crap and being shot at is clearly all we care about. Unstoppable just has its damn priorities straight.

The movie did have a slight snag for me, though, in the beginning where it says "Based on true events," because obviously it must be very loosely based on true events (and it is), or else these two guys would have been Sully Sullenberger long before Sully Sullenberger was. It just took me out of it to put that at the beginning, but I pretty quickly forgot about that after Rosario Dawson described the speeding train as "a missile the size of the Chrysler Building." I mean obviously. Well-played, some screenwriter.

Check out an interview with Denzel Washington and Chris Pine.

Tell us what you thought of Unstoppable, then see our our runaway train preparedness guide!