Unstoppable and The Next Three Days, which were both released in 2010, illustrate the difference between moral simplicity and complexity in the art of cinematic storytelling.  I have argued in other essays that most films feature one or more characters who are the moral center of the stories being told on screen, but this is also true of novels, short stories, plays, and oral narratives.  The purpose of a well-constructed story –whether it is War and Peace or a story being told by a barber as he cuts someone’s hair—is to instruct, educate, and delight readers or listeners in some way, and one or more of the characters in the story convey or reflect the author’s message through their words and actions.

She is an American movie star, glamorous and famous.  He is the proprietor of a hobbling travel book shop in a suburb of London.  In 1999’s Notting Hill they have an improbable on-again, off-again romance which ends, predictably, with the boy getting the girl, although not without the requisite complications along the way.  It’s the classic story of the commoner and the princess, although underlying this romantic fairy tale is a character’s moral journey that makes Notting Hill more interesting than the standard, formulaic romantic comedy.