The film was inspired by a 2001 incident in which a runaway train traveled 66 miles through northwest Ohio; the real worker was never named and was less goofy than Dewey.
Two of the real cars held thousands of gallons of molten phenol; the train reached 51 miles an hour before stopping. — Bill Simmons
Chris Pine performed all of his own stunts; Denzel dislikes heights but went on top of the train on wires, and the empty train rocked more than usual. — Bill Simmons
Railway safety field trips beside passing chemical trains have aged worst; others agree.
Will's restraining-order backstory is defended as a realistic incident, but Darcy inexplicably showing up at the end is a problem.
Darcy's motivation is unclear; a joke says having a wife pull a gun on a cop would be flattering. — Chris Ryan
Flip phones have aged; T9 texting would have made Darcy's texting obvious, and one participant says he still owns only a flip phone.
Denzel's daughters working at Hooters is proposed, but countered as something that aged best; Hooters is on the way out though still around, and the outfits are the point.
Made today, everyone would stream and tweet the runaway train with rumors.
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
Bald Denzel as a slightly condescending know-it-all works because only Denzel can pull it off. — Bill Simmons
Dewey and T.J. Miller's character are great as the screwups; Miller is unrecognizable without his long hair and mustache. — Bill Simmons
The evil executives seen briefly on a golf course are a highlight. — Bill Simmons
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. — Chris Ryan
Denzel's one rule speech to his conductor is cited as not the worst rule in the world. — Chris Ryan
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. — Chris Ryan
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.
Dewey losing the train is a first pick: he cannot catch it, falls, and is the kind of idiot a real person would be rather than a movie idiot. — Bill Simmons
Tony Scott gives fringe characters room, as with the surveillance guys in Enemy of the State, who almost steal that movie. — Bill Simmons
The train nearly hitting the horses is unreal; the audience knows the children are safe but the horse might not be, and the shot from inside the horse trailer amazes.
Made around 1990 the horse would have gone down; you do not kill a dog unless you are John Wick.
Planting a car in front of the train goes badly and it derails and explodes, the first sign it could take out a town. — Bill Simmons
Galvin's plan is never explained: the film cross-cuts between his boardroom and Rosario Dawson's people, and the audience watches the plan take shape without being told.
Information flows well: viewers see the broadcasts and everyone involved, while the men on the train keep being caught unaware.
Will falling while trying to couple the cars feels real with no CGI, making a participant nervous for Chris Pine; the foot injury looks like it hurts. — Bill Simmons
Denzel's line that Will is "different" when asked if he is okay is singled out as brutal.
The train heading into the big curve beside storage tanks is joked about as the worst city planning; a defense is promised for Picking Nits.
The curve sequence works because of the cross-cutting to everyone watching on TV: the engineers, Rosario Dawson's team, Denzel's daughters at Hooters, Pine's wife and son, and the bars, which makes it emotional.
Tilting trains are believable because nobody knows enough about trains, unlike buses taking a ramp at 55.
Will jumping out and back onto the train is chosen as the most rewatchable scene; it leads to Denzel standing on top of the train with his arms up. — Bill Simmons
Fast and Furious has desensitized viewers to jumping between moving vehicles; Dewey's run shows how hard it really is. — Bill Simmons
Runaway Train with Eric Roberts and Voight influenced Tony Scott; it is a cynical convict movie where the train is not a character, but Denzel atop the train echoes Voight's ending.
The helicopter attempt to stop the train with a man hanging out is picked; one shot holds two trains, three choppers and a fleet of emergency vehicles. — Chris Ryan
Favorite shot is the grain explosion while Pine works on the coupling, with the helicopter flying parallel through the cornstorm, likened to Days of Heaven and Apocalypse Now; the most rewatchable scene is Ned arriving at the end in his red truck and getting Chris Pine to the front. — Quentin Tarantino
There is only one answer among Denzel, racism or President Obama, and it is progress, because that is why we got Obama and the movie solved everything; a case could be made for Obama, who owned the movie by bookending his nomination and victory with its music, which stuns one host.
Yoast and Boone never connect outside football; a live TV crew at a 1971 high school final; no prevent defense on the last play; Boone discussing Lastik's test scores in front of the room; the last play not shown; advanced fumbles; the single grape on Denzel's spoon; the Gettysburg death toll; the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis introduction
A producer would have had the most notes on Yost and Denzel, two ships passing in the night who connect only through dropping off the daughters, though that may be how dads become friends; a TV crew broadcasting the championship live in 1971 is doubted; and the other team should have been in a prevent defense with 20 seconds left instead of leaving nobody for 50 yards.
Picking nits is always the worst part of the Rewatchables for him. — Shea Serrano
The nits are out of love, since the hosts have seen the movie so many times they have to pick it apart; another nit is Coach Boone telling Lou Elastic (as transcribed) to send his test scores in the middle of a dead-silent room, which is where Disney went too far.
Agrees the last play was shot badly, since he wanted to see the run down the sideline and expected a penalty callback; in Texas a fumble could not be advanced and the film advances a couple; and in the camp cafeteria Denzel talks holding a spoon with one single grape and no fruit cup. — Shea Serrano
A historical nit: 8 million people did not die at Gettysburg; and Denzel calling Bertier and Ray the Racist Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in front of everyone would have started a race riot, or one of the racist dads would have shot him.
The last play is absurd: from their own 24 they run a double reverse and Ronnie Bass blocks two people on his own; every final play in these movies is absurd, from Little Giants' annexation of Puerto Rico and the knuckle puck in Mighty Ducks 2 to Varsity Blues and the hook and ladder in Friday Night Lights.
Earlier, while still on the championship, the hosts question the strategy: up by four with a minute twenty, the Titans had timeouts since one was called to get Rev in, and the runner carried the ball straight up like a deer in headlights before fumbling, which, like the leading team in Hoosiers running plays while ahead, is a sports-movie trope.
This might be the height of sappy Disney sports movies, the go-to one people mention first, bigger and better than Miracle; Disney figured out the formula here and kept doing it with The Rookie and Miracle, with Mighty Ducks the other competitor and Angels in the Outfield the sappy comparison; Denzel lowering his guard and putting his daughter over his shoulder brings tears.
A soft spot for McFarlane USA (as transcribed), a Kevin Costner white-savior movie with Mexicans in a sports movie, is called justifiable; it was a tweener between theatrical sports movies and streaming, and Costner's Black and White came out the same year, which, with Draft Day where he saved the Browns, cannibalized it.
Everybody else went on to do something better except Blue, so it is Blue's Apex Mountain; Apex is defined as the height of a career, when they have the most juice.
It is probably Racist Ray's high spot and low spot, Kit Pardue's (as transcribed) too, and Panettiere's best role even if some would say Heroes.
Director Boaz Yakin knew nothing about football and was sent by Bruckheimer to a two-week football camp; filmed in Georgia, not Alexandria, with school interiors at a rival of one host's high school; LeBron James's favorite movie; the real Coach Boone was disliked and players quit; the 1971 Titans went 13-0 and ranked second nationally with nine shutouts; the comeback game was mid-season, not the state final; every opponent was already integrated; Bertier's accident came after the season; Yoast had four daughters; a toilet, not a brick, went through Boone's window
Director Boaz Yakin was hired knowing nothing about American football, so producer Jerry Bruckheimer arranged for him to attend a two-week football camp, after which he resumed full-speed work; the hosts call that full-ass research.
The film was not shot in Alexandria but in various locations in Georgia; the high school interiors are at one of a host's rival high schools, Drew Dills (as transcribed), around the corner.
Remember the Titans is LeBron James's favorite movie alongside The Hunger Games, making this a black excellence movie destined for Black History Month.
Everything big in the film is fake: the real Coach Boone was kind of a dick, people were not fans of him, many players believed his coaching had no correlation to their success, found it too harsh and quit; the film hints at it only in the exchange about his chest-pounding.
Watching again, one host has Denzel blindness but thinks Yost was the better coach and tactician while Boone was the better leader; another insists there is no way, since Yost panicked when the opponent came out in shotgun at halftime of the championship.
Feels under attack from both sides. — Shea Serrano
The 1971 Titans were ranked second in the nation, finished 13-0, won every game by a blowout with nine shutouts, and the big comeback happened mid-season while the state championship was a rout; the hosts compare it to making a movie where the Rams-Chiefs game was the Super Bowl.
Boone's line that the other schools are all white and do not worry about race was false, since every school they faced had already been integrated, an unnecessary lie to one host.
Gary Bourdier's (as transcribed) accident still hurts every viewing, but in real life it happened after the season, leaving the banquet honoring the undefeated team; that change is the one a host most wishes had not been made, and Yost actually had four daughters, only one used in the movie.
The brick through Coach Boone's window was in real life a porcelain toilet; you can tell how much somebody hates you by the size of the object they throw, which is offered as a high school yearbook quote; the $30 million budget made $136 million.
Proposed replacing beloved Will Patton, fantastic here with the right amount of energy, with Ed Harris: the movie would not be better but different, and Ed Harris and Denzel Washington going nose to nose is a really good movie. — Shea Serrano
Will Patton is called the poor man's Ed Harris, loved in The Postman, and the others go with that answer as better than anything they had.
The 'in Virginia football is a way of life' opening lifted from Varsity Blues; Virginia sold as a big football state; Hayden Panettiere's coach's daughter (disputed); the 'this is not a democracy' line; Gary's paralysis getting no extra scene; locker-room singing; football scenes shot too close; the racist-officiating subplot; Will Patton's 'remember the night they played the Titans' line; bending the real-life facts
The first line, 'in Virginia football is a way of life', is exactly how Varsity Blues started a year earlier with Texas; treating Virginia as a southern football state has not aged well since it is at most the eighth most important football state in the South, and 'we play 3A here' sounds like babies to a Texan used to 5A.
Fewer than ten states could claim football as a way of life: Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Nebraska, not Maine.
Hayden Panettiere's coach's daughter is nominated as the worst for dialing up an annoying know-it-all, but another host argues she knew her stuff and the Titans lose the championship without her sensing her dad needed to ask Boone for help; the hosts joke that a tiny white woman is why Obama got elected.
The 'this is not a democracy, this is a dictatorship and I am the law' line is weak from the screenwriter who gave us 'left side, strong side' and four or five incredible lines, and could have been workshopped.
After Gary is paralyzed and Julius visits, the film drops him; it needed one more scene, an Oscar-clip moment with the nurse, and the hosts ask whether we are done with characters singing Ain't No Mountain High Enough in a locker room.
Some football scenes were filmed too close and needed more wide shots; the racist officiating in the semifinals, with Yost confronting the referee, is corny and the ref gives up his racism very quickly, though the film needs white-ally moments by the end.
Will Patton's 'make sure they remember forever the night they played the Titans' speech divides the hosts: one wanted the line given to Denzel, another says let the chef cook since he is talking to his own defense, and Denzel was not coaching the defense until the championship.
As the tiebreaker, the issue with the line is that it is so big and he never says 'the Titans', going 'the time they played the Titans' with eight more words, which was hated. — Rembert Browne
The line is bad because it is the name of the movie and the actor is clearly going for the movie show; the hosts love when somebody says the title during the movie, like Travolta in Face Off, and Will Patton is defended as great in the moment because he has learned from Boone; Gary pointing at the coach after a play in the semifinals is another bad part.
Bending all the facts from real life is another thing that aged worst.
Will ignore the fact-bending forever; as far as he is concerned this is like The Social Network and that is how Facebook was founded. — Shea Serrano
The actor who plays Gary Bourdier (as transcribed) is so good in Sons of Anarchy that he reads as two different people; one host never watched that show, Googled him and found crazy facial hair, and had assumed the actor died when Bertier did; the character is who Gary would have become if he had not been paralyzed.
The soundtrack has aged the best: John Fogarty (as transcribed) faded into classic rock yet ended up in twelve movies, any retro sports movie must use Credence (as transcribed); Blue starts singing four times in the first 22 minutes, Julius tells him to shut up in front of the white people, and the film has a Ryan Murphy quality with Marvin Gazebob (as transcribed), James Taylor, the Temptations, Cat Stevens, Sly Stone and Spirit in the Sky.
The Titan Spirit theme, played in the room, makes a host well up; it has been used in countless World Series, Super Bowl and NBA telecasts and at the 2008 Democratic National Convention after Barack Obama's nomination and his victory speech, so the hosts joke that Obama does not become president without Coach Boone, which one host learned only from the research.
Denzel tossing the banana to the opposing coach always gets a laugh with his little smirk, and the hosts marvel that he carried a banana in his pocket all game.
Ray the Racist is a perfect villain who does not just hold racism but loves it, stalking shirtless around the locker room as if he might kill somebody; he is a made-up character, and a certain short, strong-chinned type of actor is cast for the over-the-top racist, which Matt Damon transcended in School Ties but Burgess Jenkins did not.
Kate Bosworth plays the racist token wet-blanket girlfriend who still looks great in every scene and comes around to Julius at the end; the hosts debate how many days later Julius and she would get together, with one saying never because of Gary, another saying within a week, and Ray the Racist judged the better match for her.
The racists are power-ranked: Gosling's dad screaming at Yost is a number one seed with racism from eight angles, the racist coach, the brick thrower, every opposing player and the assistant coach who walks out of the diner leaving Yost with the bill.
Being attracted to Kate Bosworth here is ruled a no because she plays a high schooler, though everybody in the film is eight years older than high school; the final picks are the Titan Spirit theme, with its arc from sports telecasts to the Obama election, and the cast, which got more famous yet still feels like these characters rather than Avon Barksdale or the Gone in 60 Seconds guy; the gulf between Denzel and the second most famous person in the 2000 cast is gigantic.
If Emma and Ray had a kid, the hosts guess he would be one of the tiki-torch people, a legacy Klansman buying rifles at Walmart.
