If there’s one thing to admire about director Tony Scott (The Taking of Pelham 123, Déjà Vu), it’s that he doesn’t bother trying to please everyone. While other filmmakers have taken on the role of mad scientist, desperately mixing together action, comedy and romance  in the blind hope that it will result in box-office dynamite, Scott is happy doing what he does best: filming Denzel Washington stop various things from blowing up. You’re either into that or you’re not.

That said, it took a film as simple yet obscenely thrilling as Unstoppable for me to realise just how into that I actually am. I can’t recall the last time a big-budget action film was purely just a big-budget action film, free from romance, comedy, mystery or any other genre pretensions that often dilutes Hollywood blockbusters. Because after all, there’s nothing particularly funny, romantic or mysterious about a runaway train loaded with explosive cargo – aka “a missile the size of the Chrysler building” — hurling towards a densely populated town, especially when it’s based on a true story. But as they say about train wrecks, it’s impossible to look away, which is exactly why Unstoppable, as crude and clichéd as it is, remains so ferociously engaging.

Washington (The Book of Eli) plays Frank Barnes, a veteran rail engineer assigned to show young-gun conductor Will Colson (Chris Pine; Star Trek) the ropes on a Pennsylvanian freight train. Screenwriter Mark Bomback does little to mask the fact that Will and Frank are both Hollywood heroes waiting to happen; Will’s wife won’t talk to him after a domestic scuffle, while Frank is in trouble with his teenage daughter for forgetting her birthday. They each need to do something impossibly heroic to prove they’re decent people.

And what do you know! A massive freight train has just escaped from its conductor after he was silly enough to jump out of the cockpit in order to manually switch the track. To make matters worse, said train – now referred to as a “Coaster” — is without airbrakes and is racing directly toward Frank and Will, not to mention numerous towns in which a derailment could cost hundreds of lives. Or, if you’re rail boss Oscar Galvin (Kevin Dunn; Transformers 2), hundreds of millions of dollars. With the help of yardmaster Connie Hooper (Rosario Dawson; Seven Pounds) relaying the situation over the radio, it’s up to Frank and Will to save the day and stop the train before disaster strikes.

You might say it’s similar in subject to Scott’s lacklustre last effort The Taking of Pelham 123, which also starred Denzel Washington and a runaway train. But the two couldn’t be more different in execution; whereas Pelham 123 was all talk and little action, Unstoppable is all action and little talk. Perhaps a better comparison would be 1994’s Speed, except where the villain is not a psychopathic Dennis Hopper, it’s simply momentum. And movie villains don’t come much more ruthless than momentum, as all it wants to do is go forth and obliterate anything and everything in its path. This leads to a bevy of exhilarating action scenes made  all the more satisfying because of Scott’s commendable choice to shoot in-camera stunts rather than fall back on digital effects. Coupled with exceptional sound design, it adds up to one hair-raisingly visceral experience that deserves to be seen on the biggest screen you can find.

With its no-nonsense attitude, characterisation isn’t one of Unstoppable‘s strong points. While Washington and Pine convince in their textbook old-timer vs. new-guy roles, there’s no subtly to the fact that supporting characters such as Will’s wife (Jessy Schram) and Frank’s daughters (Meagan Tandy and Elizabeth Mathis) are only there to add a sense of consequence should there be calamity. And Scott still has trouble keep the bloomin’ camera steady, constantly circling the actors like they’re on a merry-go-round, or sporadically zooming in and out as if the cameraman hasn’t a clue what he’s doing. It’s distracting, to say the least, especially when there’s enough energy flowing throughout the film to not warrant such hyperactivity.

Still, as a balls-to-the-wall action film, they don’t come much better than Unstoppable.  It grunts when the competition whimpers, plays with fire while others play with pixels. It has been retrofitted with the same 80s and 90s action sensibilities that made Die Hard, Terminator 2 and the aforementioned Speed such white-knuckle adrenal hits. It’s a grubby boy’s film, plain and simple. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Follow the author Anders Wotzke on Twitter.