Railway Men Try to Stop Runaway Train in "Unstoppable"

 

Denzel Washington and Chris Pine star as two railroad men who try to stop a train from causing disaster in a new Hollywood movie called “Unstoppable”.

Frank Barnes (Denzel Washington) is an experienced engineer who transports tons of freight across Pennsylvania. He is afraid that he will be replaced a younger worker.  With him is Will Colson (Chris Pine) whom has just completed training.  He also has problems – with his family. While their day starts out quite normal, a human mistake sets another train in motion with nobody controlling it. The runaway train, full of chemicals, rolls down the track heading for a densely populated town, where it could cause a major disaster. Every attempt to stop the train fails. Barnes, the experienced engineer, is confident that he can capture the train before it can crash into the town.

 

 

“Unstoppable”  is a film with fictional characters but based on a true event that really happened in Ohio in 2001. Director Toy Scott says the film is a mixture of a conflict between two characters and the disaster they are trying to avoid. Scott used real trains instead of creating action scenes with a computer. “No matter how good your computer images are” he says, “the real thing is always better.”

While Chris Pine let stuntmen take over the dangerous parts Denzel Washington did all the action himself. He ran on top of empty trains at 60 miles per hour with helicopters flying over him.  “Unstoppable” was filmed on different locations in rail yards across America.

 

 

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Words

  • attempt  = try , effort
  • avoid  = to stop something from happening
  • based on  =to come from
  • capture  = bring into control
  • cause  = lead to
  • complete  = finish
  • confident  = sure, certain
  • densely populated  = place where many people live in a small area
  • disaster  = catastrophe, tragedy that hurts or kills many people
  • engineer  = someone who has the job of driving a train
  • experienced  = qualified, with a lot of practice
  • fail  = does not work
  • fictional  = imaginary, unreal
  • freight  = goods , all kinds of products
  • head  = move towards
  • image  = picture
  • in motion  = to move from one place  to another
  • location  = place
  • major  = big
  • mixture  = mix
  • rail yard  = place where trains move into train stations to load and unload goods
  • replace  =to start doing something instead of another person
  • runaway  =  out of control
  • stuntman  = person who does dangerous scenes for an actor in a film
  • track  = two metal lines on which a train moves