Denzel Washington's 2010 Thriller From An Action Legend Is Getting A Second Life On Max

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Early on in Denzel Washington's brilliant career, he gave critics a preview of how he was going to play the movie star game going forward — and they weren't pleased. In between making acclaimed dramas like "Cry Freedom," "Glory," and "Mississippi Masala," Washington cut loose and sought to build up some box office cred in formulaic action movies like "Heart Condition" and "Ricochet." Reviewers who viewed Washington as a major star in the making were disappointed with, if not aghast at, his choices. What a colossal waste of the man's time and talent, they reasoned, to run around in his boxer shorts after John Lithgow in full glazed ham mode. Then he'd go and make "Malcolm X," and everyone would hush up until a frivolity like "Virtuosity" dropped.

Washington had it right. If he wanted to ensure more movies like "Malcolm X" or "Philadelphia" got made further down the line, he'd have to demonstrate to the studios that his name above the title meant a certain amount of guaranteed money. So, he unabashedly hurled himself into straight-up commercial plays like "Fallen" and "The Bone Collector." The movies weren't always smashes, but Washington proved time and again he could open them at the box office. They did the trick, allowing him to get numerous Spike Lee films made on decent budgets and, in 2002, launch his own directing career with "Antwone Fisher."

The actioners weren't always "one for them" movies, though. Indeed, it became clear by the mid-2000s that Washington legitimately enjoyed making big, immensely entertaining spectacle with one director in particular. They were a perfect fit because, for most of his career, Tony Scott had a critic problem as well. The brother of Academy Award-nominee Ridley Scott got repeatedly slagged as a maker of high-style-over-substance confections like "Top Gun," "Beverly Hills Cop II," and "Days of Thunder." He had talent, sure, but he squandered it under the aegis of blockbuster merchants Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. Scott never fully won over reviewers over the course of his too-short 27 year career (he died in 2012). But he came close when joining forces with Washington, and one of their finest collaborations is currently doing boffo numbers on Max.

Come and ride Tony Scott's runaway train with Unstoppable

Released theatrically in 2010, Tony Scott's "Unstoppable" remains the best runaway train movie since Andrei Konchalovsky's "Runaway Train." It's a based-on-a-true-story tribute to heroism starring Washington (who briefly left the production) and Chris Pine as, respectively, a veteran train engineer and a green conductor who are tasked with chasing down and stopping a speeding, unattended train hauling toxic substances. It's a simple plot, but a whole lot of armrest-clutching fun bolstered by the banter between Washington and Pine.

"Unstoppable" has already passed in the dad movie pantheon (it plays a good deal in syndication, and is eminently watchable whenever you happen to run across it), so it's no surprise that its debut on Max would be well received by subscribers. To give you a sense of how well it's performing, it ranks ninth in the streamer's daily top 10 movies as of November 15, 2024, just a shade below longtime behemoths like "Jurassic Park" and "Goodfellas" (via FlixPatrol). It could tick upwards too, though its rise over the next two months will be capped by Christmas flicks like "Elf" and "The Polar Express."

If you've always considered Tony Scott to be somehow lesser than his brother, throw on "Unstoppable" now and never think such ignorant thoughts again. Tony was a master orchestrator of mayhem, and an adept builder of suspense. No one possessed a more kinetically exciting aesthetic than the younger Scott, and no star valued his gifts more highly, critics be damned, than Washington.