My girlfriend and I had to travel down to London this week and I’ve been mulling a travel experiment, what would it be like to watch Mayday: Air Crash Investigation, on a plane. How would the show interact with the journey, would it alter my perception of air travel or further inform my criticism?

Anyway we took a train, so we watched Unstoppable, a movie about a runaway freight train and I don’t think the experiment worked. There just wasn’t much interaction between the movie and the journey. Part of that was how uncomfortable the train was; Lumo has taken on the west coast mainline franchise and has removed any padding from the seats, selling it to pay for their CEO bonuses. Ironically this direct failure of capitalism would be at home in an episode of Air Crash Investigation, where the actual villain is usually hungry corporate cost cutting. Lumo isn’t risking lives with its penny pinching, just bruising butts, but it’s very frustrating. Also a film about an American fright train disaster just isn’t that related to British pubic transport. So as an experiment, there were more than a few hiccups, I really don’t think it worked.

As much as I could, I enjoyed Unstoppable. It’s got this constant building suspense, with matching rising stakes. Starting from the initial runaway, which seems incidental, not carefree but not important. Building to all out, high stakes chase, our hero’s running down the runaway in another train. There’s lots of leaping, they save the day, the tension is dissipated, it’s a very Hollywood ending. The film has these release valves in it, where the runaway blasts though a stray freight car or a trailer stranded in it’s path. They give you a breather from the relentless pace and showcase the stakes, the power behind this runaway and what happens if it derails. Massive explosions are film language and here they are used as punctuation as much as thrill.

The film has the ‘based on a true story’ tag and I’m not usually a mythbuster, but Well There’s Your Problem, a podcast I listen to had just done an episode on said true story. To give it to you in brief, it’s the bones of a true story, not the details. The heroism is increased sure, but this weird undercurrent of blame and fatphobia is introduced. It adds a weird subplot where one of our ‘heroes’ is an abusive husband who’s redeemed by his actions. Theres an anti-union sentiment too, which just doesn’t fit with the larger narrative. The latter points leave an uncomfortable taste on their own, but especially when attached to ‘real’ events. I really wish that didn’t hang over the film: That part of its Hollywood flare was slander.

In the days since we traveled my ass has recovered from the train, my soul not so much. While it’s not a plane crash, the British train network is a tragedy.