What’s Aged the Best?
Bald know-it-all Denzel; Ethan Suplee and T.J. Miller as the screwups; railroad executives on the golf course; the wage-and-retirement conflict; authentic dialogue between the leads; nuanced family characterizations; Denzel's one rule; the mission-control structure; Tony Scott's mastery
In the discussion (14)
Approx. transcript time · 00:46:35Read transcript
- Bald Denzel as a slightly condescending know-it-all works because only Denzel can pull it off.
- Dewey and T.J. Miller's character are great as the screwups; Miller is unrecognizable without his long hair and mustache.
- The evil executives seen briefly on a golf course are a highlight.
- The labor politics have aged best: the company wants to retire expensive veterans and replace them with cheaply paid rookies, which hits harder now; a Saturday Night Live trailer parody mocked the expected old-versus-young cliche.
- The reveal that Frank has already been pushed out is handled without a corny countdown scene, letting the wage dynamic emerge mid-movie.
- Character-bonding scenes usually fail in action movies, but every line between the leads feels authentic, including "Ask your wife what she thinks".
- Compared with the dialogue-driven Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, none of whose versions has a working ending, the dialogue here is functional and good, and the train jargon sells it.
- Characterizations are nuanced: Denzel's daughters just work at Hooters through college rather than resenting him, and Pine's marriage is complicated.
- Denzel's one rule speech to his conductor is cited as not the worst rule in the world.
- It is a mission-control movie in the vein of Apollo 13, Armageddon, The Hunt for Red October and War Games, with Rosario Dawson's scenes a favorite; the Tony Scott version is looser, letting Kevin Corrigan's outsider interject.
- Tony Scott's mastery, an answer the speaker also gave for Dunkirk, gets better on every viewing; it being his last movie adds weight.
- Great last movies are rare; examples include Phil Carlson's Framed with Joe Don Baker and a director's final Japanese-set film that he narrates himself.
- Christopher Nolan reportedly screened Unstoppable while planning Dunkirk, and Tony Scott appears to have drawn on Apocalypse Now's rule that helicopters must fly through every shot to keep the energy alive.
- The same idea was applied to the ranch scenes in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, keeping dogs crossing in the background of every shot; the scene was not the hardest to shoot.