Pun Salad

Why yes, this is my second Kevin Corrigan movie in a row. Good catch. He's a railroad safety expert here, while in The Next Three Days he had a brief but critical role as a sleazeball drug dealer. He's utterly believable in both roles. Somebody give him an Oscar, OK?

The story: up in northern Pennsylvania, an idiot railroad employee (Ethan Suplee) cuts one too many corners in his effort to get a freight train on the correct track, and sends it hurtling southward, unchaperoned, with a load of toxic molten phenol. Meanwhile, down south, a newbie conductor (Chris Pine, the new Captain Kirk) gets teamed up with a grizzled train veteran (Denzel Washington) as his engineer. As luck would have it, Chris and Denzel are the only people who can stop the train from visiting death and destruction when it—literally—hits the small city of Stanton, PA.

This sounds clichéd, and it is. Are the young guy and the old dude initially at odds, but then develop a grudging respect for each other? You betcha. Are pictures of children shown? Yup. Are the efforts to save the day hampered by a bunch of clueless, arrogant railroad company executives, full of bad ideas and too concerned with the company's bottom line? Yes indeed. (And is the CEO shown on a sunny golf course, making his imperious poor judgment in a hasty cell phone call? Sure.)

Is there a plucky and competent young woman of color helping our heroes out at the risk of her job? Affirmative: played by Rosario Dawson.

And yet, it all works wonderfully well. Most of it due to Denzel-magic, I think; he's a lot of fun to watch. It was nominated for a Best Sound Editing Oscar, but I enjoyed it even though my crappy-sounding TV.