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| John Travolta, is shown in a scene from "The Taking of Pelham 123." |
Review: 'The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3'
[Now playing at the Harkins 6 in Sedona]
Remake of 1974 thriller set in New York's subway bristles with high-tech gimcrackery as John Travolta and Denzel Washington play tense head games.
By Peter Rainer
SEDONA, AZ (June 13, 2009) -
Way back in 1974, when the world
was young and New York was mere meadowlands, a
pretty good thriller called "The Taking of Pelham 1
2 3" screeched onto the screen. It starred Walter
Matthau as a subway dispatcher forced to deal with
the hijacker of a subway train, played by Robert
Shaw just before he made "Jaws." The ransom demands
were simple: One million in cash delivered within
the hour or hostages would be offed one per minute.
In the remake, Denzel Washington is the dispatcher
and John Travolta is the bad guy and the ransom is
$10 million. That ransom isn't the only sign of
inflation. Whereas the original, directed by Joseph
Sargent, was essentially a well-oiled B movie, the
new incarnation, directed by Tony ("Enemy of the
State") Scott, is bristling with high-tech
gimcrackery and over-the-top camera flourishes.
Scott is the kind of director who can't just show
you something – he has to pull our eyes out of their
sockets. Doesn't he realize that the New York subway
netherworld is already a stage set? Scott's
whirlybird camera moves and editing rhumbas don't
add to the mix, they detract.
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Washington's Walter Garber toils in the transit
system's control headquarters; he's a lifer in the
tunnels. Although he's under a cloud for possibly
accepting a bribe on the job, we are made to
understand that he's a decent man. His adversary,
Travolta's Ryder, has a scary black mustache and a
neck tattoo. As befitting a villain, he also has
most of the good lines. (Brian Helgeland wrote the
script.)
Walter and Ryder, via microphone hookup, develop a
queasy rapport. Head games are played on both sides,
but the shenanigans are fairly routine. At one
point, Walter, with the off-mic coaching of a
hostage negotiator (an excellent John Turturro),
cagily elicits the fact that Ryder was raised a
Roman Catholic and spent time in prison. That should
narrow the list of possible suspects.
Washington, wearing geeky glasses, looks rather
flabby in the role. (Let's hope the poundage is on
purpose.) Although it's nice to see him playing an
average guy for a change, instead of a fire
breather, it's also a disappointment. I didn't feel
as if I was getting the whole actor here, just a
marked-down facsimile. Travolta, by contrast,
overplays as much as Washington underplays. He's
like the meanie in a pulp superhero thriller. This
impression is reinforced when Ryder, in the film's
nuttiest set piece, sends the train speeding
brakeless toward Coney Island. I expected Spider Man
to save the day.
Ryder might as well be acting alone, since his
accomplices are barely sketched in. (Did Scott think
that Travolta might be upstaged? Fat chance.) James
Gandolfini shows up in an amusing cameo as the
mayor, in a part that seems cobbled together from
oddments in the careers of Rudy Giuliani, Elliot
Spitzer, and Donald Trump. At one point the mayor,
fighting the one-hour deadline, complains that the
ransom money should have been zipped to Ryder via
helicopter instead of through the clogged city
streets. We know the answer to that one: If a
helicopter had been used, there would have been no
movie.
The 1974 "Pelham" came out at a time when New York
City was a big scary deal onscreen. Films such as "Serpico,"
"Dog Day Afternoon," and "The French Connection"
really ramped up the urban gothic grunge. In today's
benighted world, New York is perceived less as the
progenitor of plagues and more like their recipient.
New York has gone from perpetrator to victim. Back
in 1974, the bad guys bubbled up from the bowels of
the city. Today, they are just one more species of
careerist and the city in which they operate is no
longer central to our movie nightmares. How can it
be? In an out-of-control world there is no such
thing as mission control. Grade: B- (Rated R for
violence and pervasive language.)
Readers' comments
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