Unstoppable (2024)
SHOULD I SEE IT?
YES
A inspiring sports story that proves to be a crowd pleaser.
Benefits from solid performances from Jharrel Jerome, Michael Peña, Don Cheadle, and Jennifer Lopez.
Impressive, nuanced visual effects work and a thrilling final sequence makes Unstoppable hard to resist.
NO
Hard to resist that is, unless you are being honest that the movie plays things safe and leans on formulaic tropes and predictability to try and win our hearts.
There are specific things to like about the film, but for me at least, the sum of its total never really adds up to anything all that special. Anthony Robles is special. He deserves a better movie.
Imagine this movie if the grit and struggle and obstacles Anthony Robles overcomes weren’t presented as little more than movie-of-the-week melodrama.
OUR REVIEW
The hardest movies to criticize often are the crowd-pleasers. The movies that pull on heartstrings and tell inspirational stories of overcoming obstacles and experiencing a major achievement. This is especially true with sports stories. There is just something about sports movies that fill our hearts full and leave us in awe of the accomplishment being recognized.
Unstoppable is one of two inspirational sports stories to hit theaters for a limited Oscar run in the fall of 2025. The other, The Fire Inside, tells the story of the first American female boxer to win an Olympic gold medal. This film introduces us to Anthony Robles (Jharrel Jerome), who in 2011 became a national collegiate wrestling champion, despite only having one leg. His story is remarkable, offering the very ingredients needed for what should be a terrific, uplifting and inspiring film.
On the one hand, Unstoppable is perfectly fine. There’s nothing too objectionable about it. This is the very definition of an easy watch, with the occasional, intense moments of domestic drama played out in such a way that most families could still share this as a family movie night. Oscar-winning editor William Goldenberg (Argo) makes his directorial debut here and keeps us engaged with a story that takes us from the stress of college recruiting in Robles’ senior year of high school up through that fateful night in 2011 when the talented wrestler made NCAA history.
And again, all of that is fine. At times, it is honestly hard not to get swept up in Goldenberg’s telling of Robles’ story. Jerome, an Emmy winner for “When They See Us,” knows how to portray someone scrappy, hardwired to not give up on his dreams. When faced with a challenge, Robles puts his head down and just works harder. We see this time and again, through a number of montages, something Goldenberg turns to time and again to connect plot developments and scene shifts.
Jennifer Lopez plays Judy, the mother-of-five who is doing everything she can to hold her family together while husband Rich (Bobby Cannavale) is a clumsy, arrogant, and at times abusive authoritarian in the home. Lopez does what she can. The screenplay, adapted from Robles’ 2012 book by a writing team of Eric Champnella, John Hindman, and first-time screenwriter Alex Harris, doesn’t do her many favors.
Though Lopez gives an emotionally-charged performance, Judy is a stock character we see frequently in movies with similar types of themes. She enables Rich in the worst of ways. The kids are fearful of their dad, but their mom always has their back. And of course Rich challenges Anthony to try to level up to be “the man of the house one day.”
In these scenes, Unstoppable looks pretty defeatable.
The best moments come whenever Michael Peña or Don Cheadle are on screen. Peña plays Anthony’s high school coach who always offers awkward words of wisdom and takes a genuine interest in Anthony’s goals and dreams. Cheadle plays Anthony’s coach at Arizona State University. We learn that Robles turned down a full ride scholarship to Drexel University to walk-on and try to make the wrestling team at nearby Arizona State University. Cheadle doesn’t make things easy for him. Yet Robles, as the title tells us, exhibits an unstoppable desire to not let his disability define him while staying close to help support his mother and his siblings.
I have to say there are some really impressive visual effects at hand here. Jerome learned how to wrestle using only his left leg, while his right leg, described by the actor as tied behind him like a tail, was digitally removed in post-production. Goldenberg incorporates a seamless transition between Jerome’s work on the mat with actual footage from Robles’ wrestling matches. When neither of those options were available, Robles himself worked as Jerome’s wrestling stunt double in a pretty cool piece of trivia. Jerome’s performance is believable and the film is nearly perfect in creating the illusion that Jerome has one leg.
So when taking all that under consideration, and at the risk of being the movie critic who doesn’t like the movies you like, I just felt indifferent to the film overall. There’s a lack of originality and it falters in its execution. Unstoppable retains a verse-chorus-verse type of story structure, where we really only get swept up in the exciting final sequence where Robles earns a second opportunity to win a collegiate national championship against a bitter rival.
The musings and life lessons all feel rather simple. Goldenberg telegraphs the highs and lows and squanders some really effective performances. And I absolutely say all of this knowing that when Unstoppable pops up on Amazon Prime in January 2025, and families sit down and watch it together, this is going to be a bonafide crowd-pleaser.
People will make posts about this to their Facebook friends.
Everything just feels safe. I wish the film took more risks and chances and avoided such a glossy depiction of grit and determination. Robles’ story is inspirational and should be celebrated. Unstoppable seems to take those facts for granted and in doing so, undermines the very statements the film wants to make.
CAST & CREW
Starring: Jharrel Jerome, Jennifer Lopez, Michael Peña, Don Cheadle, Bobby Cannavale, Mykelti Williamson, Shawn Hatosy, Noen Perez, Carlos Solorzano, Julianna Gamiz, Elijah James, Johnni DiJulius, Anthony Robles
Director: William Goldenberg
Written by: Eric Champnella, Alex Harris, John Hindman
Based on the book “Unstoppable” by Anthony Robles and Austin Murphy
Release Date: December 6, 2024 (theatrical) | January 16, 2025 (streaming)
Amazon MGM Studios