Top Gun director Tony Scott and Oscar winner Denzel Washington really like trains.

Unstoppable is their second consecutive collaboration where the plot is centered around trains. It certainly makes up for their god-awful remake of last year’s The Taking of Pelham 123, starring Washington and John Travolta.

Based on a true story, the premise has a runaway train (sans conductor) that’s full of explosive cargo barreling towards a populated area in Pennsylvania at 70 mph in 100 minutes. If it derails, the property damage would be in the billions.

All efforts to stop this train have failed. Now it’s up to Frank Barnes (Washington) and Will Colter (Chris Pine, the new Captain James T. Kirk from last year’s Star Trek reboot) to stop it. Their train is on the same track as the runaway is. They plan on locking on to the runaway train with theirs and move it in the opposite direction, eventually slowing it to a complete stop.

This is an unapologetic popcorn movie by Scott, who is the kid brother of director Ridley Scott who’s perhaps best-known for 2000’s Gladiator. The action zooms by at a frenetic pace and the tension mounts with each frame. Some of the dialogue seems dumbed down, but Washington saves it. The man can make the phonebook sound like Shakespeare.

Unstoppable marks the fifth collaboration between Scott and Washington. Their other collaborations – 1995’s Crimson Tide, 2004’s Man on Fire, 2006’s Déjà Vu, and 2009’s The Taking of Pelham 123 – are worth checking out. Crimson Tide, a submarine thriller with Oscar winner Gene Hackman, is the best of the bunch, whereas Déjà Vu is the most underrated of the bunch.

Besides Washington and Pine, the cast also includes Rosario Dawson (Men in Black II, Sin City) as Connie Hooper, the train dispatcher; Kevin Dunn (Transformers) as Oscar Galvin, a corporate bureaucratic blowhard; and Jessy Schram (Lifetime’s Jane Doe telefilms) as Will’s wife. Actress Mimi Rogers (Someone to Watch Over Me and the first ex-Mrs. Tom Cruise) serves as a producer.

All in all, Unstoppable is not spectacular, but it is a solid, entertaining romp that cleanses your palate from the train wreck that is The Taking of Pelham 123.

RATED R for foul language, violence. 1 hour, 40 minutes.
GRADE: B