Watching the special features on the Blu-ray release of Unstoppable (2010), one gets the impression that a whole lot of time both during pre-production and production was spent on character development, figuring out who these two main characters were and why they would what they do. In piece after piece we get to hear about how they were researched, how their story changed, and how elements of the final tale are true to life. As you watch the film though, none of that comes across. Instead, what we get is a final product that is about a couple of non-entities trying to stop a runaway train, and that is just one of the reasons the movie is disappointing.
These two non-entities are played by Denzel Washington and Chris Pine, one of whom has proven himself versatile for years on end, and the other whom has shown that he can be incredibly compelling and a draw in his own right in a in a big-budget, special effects driven blockbuster. Washington is Frank, the grizzled train-driving veteran with a couple of weeks left on the job before a forced earlier
retirement and Pine is Will, the ne'er-do-well from a rich family and with problems of his own.
As the story unfolds, it seems inconceivable that these wholly stock characters were constructed from the meticulous research that went into crafting the film, but the research certainly didn't go into creating any of the other characters either. Again here, the supporting cast isn't bad by any stretch of the imagination, it features Rosario Dawson, Ethan Suplee, Kevin Dunn, Kevin Corrigan, and Lew Temple, but no one is given a real character to play, just words to yell out in an agitated and out of breath fashion as the unmanned train continues to roll.
Directed by Tony Scott and with a script by Mark Bomback, Unstoppable is "inspired by true events" and rather than being the story of any character in the film, is the story of a train accidentally sent down the tracks at high speed with no one aboard. It is a film entirely about collisions, near misses, and the force that a half-mile-long freight train has when doing 70mph.
Unfortunately, even here, the tale of the train's power is given short shrift. Unstoppable would kindly be called a "taut" action thriller, it's 98 minute runtime only long enough to show the train going down the tracks and people being shocked by it. Scott's direction of Bomback's script may place on emphasis on how things actually work on board a train and (maybe) in a rail yard, but none of that is ever conveyed to the audience. Literally from the moment the train starts going, you'll sit there wondering to yourself "Wait, why didn't they just…?" and "huh, why are they doing that?" I'm not convinced that Scott and Bomback don't have great answers for why anything—like a bunch of armed police officers deciding to try to shoot a tiny button on the train to make it stop, a button located right next to a fuel tank—occurs, but the audience is never let in on any of it. There simply exists a scene where the officers start firing at the train with nothing before it or after it to really give it context. Well, nothing except a brief 
news report which immediately follows the scene and which says what the officers were shooting at (because the scene itself doesn't even make that clear).
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