Unstoppable (2004)

Wesley Snipes is a deranged former army personnel and CIA agent in rehab who suffered the loss of his best friend in a mission in Bosnia. He dates his late friend's sister, who is a detective. Snipes becomes mixed up in a plot dealing with an experimental truth serum and is abducted and injected by the serum which gives him flashbacks to his Bosnian mission and cannot distinguish from reality while his girlfriend needs to find the antidote.The film has a moderate budget and made for a cinema release but is rather absurd and flawed even for an action thriller. Snipes has charisma but looks like a man whose future is heading for straight to DVD films.

Unstoppable is set in Baltimore where ex secret service CIA agent Dean Cage (Wesley Snipes) is trying to adjust to normal civilian life after his best mate Scott (Cristian Solimeno) was killed in action in Bosnia. Scott's wife & police detective Amy Knight (Jacqueline Obradors) is trying to help Dean, while waiting to meet Amy in a coffee shop Dean is mistaken for a federal agent & is injected with an experimental hallucinogenic drug named EX which has been developed by the US Government but stolen by rogue agent Sullivan (Stuart Wilson) along with the antidote, anyone injected with EX is easily brainwashed but the drug is fatal after several hours. Dean manages to escape from Sullivan & his men & Amy uses her police contacts to discover the truth & try to help Dean who is now a wanted man as he slowly dies from the drug, Dean's only hope is to face Sullivan again & get the antidote...Also known as Nine Lives in Europe this Aruba American co-production was directed by David Crason & is yet another Millennium Films action flick featuring some has been Hollywood action star, in this case it's Snipes who really hasn't made a decent film in years if we are honest & while Unstoppable isn't necessarily unwatchable it's hardly any sort of masterpiece. To be fair to Unstoppable there's the potential for a decent little action thriller here, the idea that someone is injected with some drug that will kill him in a few hours & thus has to find an antidote is fine as the pace never lets up & the stakes are high but Unstoppable is no Crank (2006) & it has some major problems that prevent me from being able to recommend it. As a cheap rental or if you catch it on telly for free then Unstoppable is alright but it suffers from basic plot holes & a story that if you think about it for any length of time is just laughable, for instance there's this powerful yet fatal drug that is developed by the US Government & the whole lot is stolen by one guy as well as the antidote. We never find out how Sullivan manages to steal a top secret drug & most baffling of all the US Government doesn't seem to have any of the antidote & I just sat there thinking why doesn't the Government just make more antidote? It developed the stuff & made it in the first place, why not make more antidote? The problem is then solved surely? I guess we wouldn't have a film then would we? Why doesn't the Government CIA agents just kill Sullivan & his men? If Sullivan is dead he then can't sell the drugs to anyone, right? Problem solved, again. The number of coincidences that occur to propel Snipes into the plot is just silly, from bad timing to mistaken identity to general incompetence. At 90 odd minutes it moves along at a decent pace, the story is alright if poorly scripted & the character's are functional too. Unstoppable isn't a bad film to be honest it's just not brilliant either, it's a time waster. No more, no less.The action scenes in Unstoppable are also better than the usual direct to video fare, the fights are good, the shoot-outs are decent & there's even a cool scene involving a huge truck swerving off a bride & exploding at the bottom. The film takes place over one night & is quite dark & tense at times & it's all competent as I said but never that gripping or involving. There's an early scene in which a guy on a stretcher gets run over by a huge truck & his dismembered body is seen a few times. The film switches between reality & Snipes hallucination, for instance when a bad guy says he is on fire Snipes actually thinks he is & a lot more could have been done with the premise other than have Snipes flashback to his time in Bosnia.Filmed in Bulgaria although set in Baltimore, the production values are decent enough & it's well made. The acting is alright, Snipes looks bored while Obradors played a cop in seventy five episodes of NYPD Blue.Unstoppable is a pretty decent little action thriller, certainly by direct to video fare standards Unstoppable is alright but at the same time it's nothing that memorable or amazing. Good but not great.

This movie was made by a team of beginners, almost everybody is unknown in the team, with the exception of Wesley Snipes. It seems to be done on a low budget, but it is ambitious, well paced, and frankly speaking I do not understand the negative reactions of many of the viewers who commented on this film. The story is in the post-war trauma genre, with the principal hero getting caught into a mistaken identity case, involved in some psychotic drugs exchange, and injected himself with the drug, which leads to personality control and is fatal if an anti-dote is not found in the next few hours. Sure, there are a lot of coincidences around to enable the story, and the film has its dose of incredible gunshots and violent fist punching, but it's not worse than in most of the blockbusters in recent years. What counts and is good in my opinion is the fact that the story is well-filmed, characters are credible and the relationship between the main character, his girl-friend including the follow-ups of the war experiences of the hero are human and credible. Acting is OK, no good special effects to mention, but the interest on what is going on is kept awake all over. The film does not seem to have been released in cinemas in the US, may have gone directly to video and DVD, and I am wondering why. Anyway, for action films lovers it's an average plus installment, not to be avoided.

I am not a big fan of action films just for the sake of seeing violence. I liked the romantic side of this film. I appreciated seeing Jacqueline Obradors as the police officer/love interest in the film. She was a strong independent woman and she stood by her man. He referred to her as his sister, the sister of his best friend. He had wanted to marry her long before but the tragedy that happened with her brother prevented him from going forward.She stuck with him through all his emotional problems as well as through the incident in this movie.I never cared for her character in NYPD Blue but I really liked her here.I was rooting for Wesley Snipe's character and her to have a chance at a life together.