By Peter Covino

Entertainment Editor

There is something intrinsically wrong watching Denzel Washington trying to stop a speeding train.

Last time we looked, he was not donning a red cape and was unable to leap  tall buildings in a single bound.

Despite the ridiculousness of the plot, and yes, it was “inspired by a true story” Unstoppable somehow still works.

This is Speed with better acting, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three with at the very least, a better title.

Washington is the old, crusty veteran. Okay, so maybe he isn't crusty, but veteran engineer Frank  has been working on the railroad for almost 20 years. Upstart Will (Chris Pine) is the conductor, and the man Frank knows will be replacing him as a cost-saving measure in a few months.

There is the usual back story: Frank is a widow with two college daughters who work at Hooters to get through school (a fact lifted from the real story), while Will's marriage is on the rocks and his wife has a restraining order against him.

The back story will get in the way again, by movie's end, but for the most part, Unstoppable is a tale told at breakneck speed, literally.

Director Tony Scott (he also directed the remake of Pelham) gets credit for shooting this slice of realism. There is no overload of CGI effects here. Much of what you see are real trains and real stuntmen, so much so that you can forgive the silliness of it all — man or men versus train.

The main thrust of the story starts simply enough: an overweight engineer, who thinks he has enough time to reboard his train after throwing a switch that is in the incorrect position, is wrong. Very wrong. The train pops into high gear and the big man is no match for the accelerating multi-car train. To make matters worse, several of the cars contain a toxic material. The actual 2001 incident was quite similar. That Ohio train had 47 cars and left the railroad yard without an engineer and charged through the state for two hours before it was boarded.

But even that lacked the excitement of Chris Pine in full Star Trek mode leaping from freight car to freight car trying to set the brakes manually for each car. It is reminiscent of that classic scene from Stagecoach (1939) where  stuntman Yakima Canutt  leaps from the horses to the stagecoach, then on to the yoke, down under the stagecoach and back up the other side.

The high-speed chase is further complicated because the train will eventually encounter one of those hairpin curves where it will derail and its toxic payload will lay waste most of an entire city.

There are other tense moments before that including a train full of children on a day excursion in the path of the train and even our heroes Frank and Will are at one point faced with a head on collision between their train and the runaway.

If you like railroading, the train shots are outstanding, in this slice of Americana which feels like it could have been shot in a bygone era, except for the modern filmmaking techniques.

Hopefully, no real trains were hurt in the making of this film. But I'm not making any promises.

Critic's rating: B

Rated PG-13