The runaway 777 crashes through all barriers and blockades in Tony Scott's efficient, surprisingly entertaining transit thriller, Unstoppable.

Runaway train thriller delivers the goods. Elizabeth Kerr reports.

There's something to be said for persona. Actors make a living projecting images that connect with audiences and frequently go to the same well because it's safe and it sells tickets. Do it enough times, and you're "money in the bank," and you can sit back and enjoy a long and prosperous life on the big screen. Movie-goers the world over have paid many, many dollars to see Harrison Ford as the slightly gutsier-than-average Everyman wading through varying degrees of moral quagmire and save the day. Decades ago, Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn's brands of mid-century stoic bravado and ahead-of-the-curve feistiness drew scads of viewers. Each had or has a specific, carefully maintained image that for whatever reasons appeal(ed) to audiences in large numbers.

This is not to be confused with typecasting, another phenomenon altogether that usually does the opposite and shortens a performer's career and constricts their prospects. Timothy Olyphant went from a breakout role as a stand-up sheriff on HBO's Deadwood, to a great performance in the underappreciated The Crazies as a stand-up sheriff fighting zombies to his current gig on Justified - as a stand-up federal marshal. He's not a sheriff, but he does have the hat for one. Is this persona or typecasting?

As movies and television get more and more expensive to create, producers try their best to ensure an audience will be found for the product. When the studio system ruled the day, acting was a job like any other. In the 1940s and '50s, Bogie and Hepburn could do the same thing time and again and it made very little difference to anyone. It was as if they were honing a specialty. Of course, it helped that both had enormous screen presence.

Cut to the current crop of clones, or more accurately actors that seem to be cloning themselves. Michael Cera, Jennifer Aniston, Tom Cruise, Zhang Ziyi, Katherine Heigl, Meg Ryan (where is she now?) and Tom Hanks frequently border on typecasting; most play the same character (give or take a few tics) all the time. When was the last time you saw Hanks as something other than a self-deprecating, humble, all-American guy? Go ahead and think on it. I'll wait ... Right. You haven't. So is Hanks typecast or is he possessed of a persona so captivating no one's noticed he plays one part? Leonardo DiCaprio played the same character twice in one year (Shutter Island and Inception), the only difference being one film was stronger than the other.

Which brings us to Denzel Washington, a good actor who has to deal with the double whammy of being a good black actor. Washington has dignified himself by avoiding the pitfalls of Hollywood's, er, unique view of race and ethnicity. He's rarely been the drug dealer, pimp, ex-con, or musically blessed ghetto homeboy more than was necessary (true, he was a drug dealer in American Gangster, but that was also a biopic of Great Social Relevance).

Lately Washington has forayed into the put-upon average citizen who navigates the world to the best of his working-class abilities. He was just trying to finish his shift in The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 and got caught up in revenge scheme by an angry former transit authority employee. He was just trying to make things right for a family he failed to protect in Man On Fire. He was just trying to negotiate a bank hostage situation while under the shadow of corruption charges in Inside Job. In each case Washington ends up summoning heretofore-unknown reserves of righteousness and heroics to save the day.

And so in that light comes Unstoppable, a surprisingly entertaining bit of transport porn by Ridley's less high brow brother Tony Scott (Top Gun, and a near six-pack of Washington films) wherein Washington is Frank, a 30-year engineer forced into early retirement who's just trying to get through the day when it falls to him to stop the runaway 777 freight train from crashing into Stanton, Pennsylvania (the film is based on true event that unfolded in Ohio in 2001). His partner in heroics is Will (Chris Pine, Star Trek), a rookie from a wealthy, connected family with some serious marriage issues. Together with control room boss Connie (Rosario Dawson) the two handsome men with excellent teeth show the fat cats in the boardroom how to work the trains and divert disaster. The train, you see, is carrying a dizzying quantity of toxic chemicals.

There are essentially two films inside Unstoppable: a non-stop (no pun intended) actioner that starts fast and never really lets up until the final frames. It's bizarrely gripping in the way Speed managed to keep the events on a speeding bus compelling for the bulk of its run time. All of Scott's signature stylistic flourishes are on display - the shaky camera, quick zooms and pans, jarring cuts - and it works in the context. But lurking underneath the surface is a subtle portrait of the dead-end misery hovering over the so-called Rust Belt of the American northeast. The tone of glum industrialism suits another of Scott's hallmarks, the super-saturated images. Scott and writer Mark Bomback (Live Free or Die Hard) build a nice, if brief, dynamic between the haves and have-nots and the crankiness with which they interact. The whole reason the train goes rogue to begin with lies in the blase attitude of a rail yard worker that can't bring himself to care about the job when his employers clearly don't care about him.

But not so Frank, and it's that weary sense of honor and duty that Washington has made his own in the last few years. When we learn that despite his fate, Frank is willing to risk life and limb to stop 777, it's not really surprising. Washington has put himself on the line before and it nearly eliminates any sense of drama, which is Unstoppable's biggest flaw. It's the right thing to do - and only Denzel could possibly do it. Well, him or Harrison Ford. There's a fine line between persona and typecasting and Mr. Washington is doing a fine job of blurring it.

Unstoppable opened in Hong Kong on Thursday.

The well connected new guy, Will (Chris Pine) reports for duty on the train yard in Tony Scott's working-class thriller, Unstoppable.

Will (Chris Pine) gets macho and tries to connect the pins on a speeding freight train in the unironically titled Unstoppable.

It starts as just another depressing day on the yard for rookie Will (Chris Pine) and the suitably grizzled veteran Frank (Denzel Washington) in Unstoppable.

(HK Edition 11/13/2010 page4)