The real hero in Unstoppable is not the unmanned train cradling a deadly mix bag cargo of chemicals hurtling at 46 miles per hour. It isn’t Denzel Washington or Chris Pine sketched after real-life people who helped decelerate the speeding train with their own small locomotive. It isn’t the real-life dilemmas fabricated and exaggerated for the big screen. And it isn’t the screenplay by Mark Bomback, which wades through elements without being conspicuous.

The real hero of the film is director Tony Scott with a penchant for taut, highly-commercial thrillers that go boom at the box office. His aesthetic-cap is on tight. His eye is tighter on technicalities and he grapples the obvious without making it too obvious.

Scott accelerates Unstoppable with small, minute twists that are easy to digest and skimps on anything deus ex machina. The structure is introduced in the beginning of the film, so all that’s left is to maintain the speed and grip of the film. At times Unstoppable looks like a 10-year-old chugging non-stop with his electric train set. When he’s having so much fun, who are we to disagree? — Farheen Jawaid