Quentin Tarantino is an uber-cinephile. His love of films knows no bounds. Whether it’s classics, Westerns, samurai films, or horror flicks about alligators, the filmmaker is someone that is able to enjoy just about any type of film. And so, it almost makes sense, in a very Tarantino way, that he’d choose “Unstoppable” as one of the best films of the 2010s.
Recently, Quentin Tarantino sat with the folks over at The Ringer for three episodes of the podcast, “The Rewatchables.” And while we only know two of the three films he talked about (the third episode has yet to be released), both the first two films — “Dunkirk” and now, “Unstoppable” — rank in his top 10 of the decade.
READ MORE: Quentin Tarantino Says Christopher Nolan’s ‘Dunkirk’ Is His #2 Film Of The Decade
Now, there will likely be many that look at “Dunkirk” and say, “Yep, that’s about right.” But there aren’t likely a ton of people that will immediately think about “Unstoppable,” directed by Tony Scott and starring Chris Pine, Denzel Washington, and Rosario Dawson, as one of the ten best films of the last ten years. (It definitely didn’t make our list.) But hey, Tarantino has always been a guy that marches to the beat of his own drum.
READ MORE: The 100 Best Films Of The Decade [2010s]
And when asked why he chose “Unstoppable,” he gave some pretty compelling reasons.
“I picked it because I just actually spent the last six weeks going through a whole bunch of movies from the last decade, so I could make my Top 10,” said Tarantino. “I was rewatching a lot of stuff that I liked and watching stuff that I never got around to watching [before] but I thought could be a contender to one degree or another. And so, one of the ones I did rewatch was ‘Unstoppable.’”
He added, “And when I saw it, it just blew me away so much. Both the combination of just the movie that’s on the screen, the movie that is there, and the idea that it’s one of the last great movies from one of the last great directors of all time, at the height of his powers, doing what he does…It was my #10 of my top 10 of the decade. And frankly, now after watching it again for this [podcast], it should be higher.”
Tony Scott was a fantastic director (mostly his earlier stuff), but I can’t tell you that I’d put “Unstoppable” up there amongst his best. In fact, I can’t even really tell you much about the film, as I forgot about it years ago. So, I don’t know about you folks, but I’ll definitely dive back into “Unstoppable” and listen to the podcast to see if I can possibly fathom what Tarantino is talking about.