The Taking of Pelham 123
3 out of 5In a remake of the 1970s classic thriller, dispatcher Walter Garber (Denzel Washington) has to handle a hostage situation when Ryder (John Travolta) and his men seize a subway train.The original 1974 version of The Taking of Pelham 123 is a very tough act to follow, so if anyone is going to remake it, it has to be good. And on paper, Denzel Washington and John Travolta directed by Tony Scott in a heist thriller sounds like a good mix. In practice, it’s over-boiled, messy and oddly flat, but does have some things going for it, so it gets a fair 1, 2, 3 stars. Sorry. Had to get a pun in somewhere!
The story is good and simple. Ryder and his gang take over a subway train and ransom the lives of the passengers for $10,000,000. Initially bemused at why anyone would want to hijack a train underground, Garber (in the dispatcher’s office) tries to keep up with Ryder’s demands. The bulk of the film is between Travolta and Washington over a radio, so not an all-action Speed style thriller, although Tony Scott seems determined to make it so. Why use suspense when you can film like the camera is attached to a waltzer? There’s a good chase sequence through New York as the police try to get the money to the station, but action junkies will be disappointed overall and I fear the trailer is misleading. Again though, Scott seems afraid to rely on the high quality script to convey menace, so over-does everything.
The forgettable gang are a collection of brief cameos from other heist films, while Travolta does the same intelligent psycho act from Broken Arrow, Swordfish, etc, but actually, he’s doing it better. He tries to give Ryder method and madness, and you’re never quite sure when he’s in full control, so the lives of the passengers are in serious peril. Unfortunately, said passengers are so weakly written they barely project the peril themselves and are simply walking clichés. A sequence with a laptop is both predictable and wasted, and it isn’t the only part of the film that brushes logic to one side!
Garber’s colleagues are also weak. They get more to do than the gang, but are largely boring. Even John Turtorro can’t squeeze any life out of his textbook hostage negotiator. The reason all these sub-characters are so underwritten is probably because the two main ones are overwritten. Garber is being investigated for fraud and while it powers an interesting conversation with Ryder about responsibility and Catholic confessional, it also makes a simple thriller very messy. We also find out reams of stuff about Ryder’s motivation and in the end it seems self-defeating; in retrospect, I don’t think he needed to go to the lengths he did to achieve what he wanted. At least it’s a different motivation to the original, so it isn’t too predictable.
There are other deviations, so there’s some effort to stand apart in this remake. A contrivance gets Garber more into the plot, but loses anything to match the originals fantastic ending. There are some cute references though; Garber’s accused of taking a bribe from Japanese train manufacturers (Walter Matthau’s Garber gave Japanese business men a tour) and James Gandolfini’s mayor worries about catching a cold (he had one in the first film!).
Gandolfini is a shining light in this film. His Mayor has some great lines and he plays it well, touching on what made the original’s version so good, without being a copycat. I suppose the rest of the film tries it, but this is the only bit that really worked. Overall this can be blamed on Helgeland’s crude script, which replaces the dry New York wit with a motherf***er here and motherf***ker there, mostly yelled by Travolta, in sharp contrast to the confident Robert Shaw.
New viewers will probably enjoy two heavyweight actors playing against each other in this overall unchallenging thriller, but only the core story survives from a classic. I for one miss Shaw’s assured and mysterious villain, Matthau’s dependable craggy, but grounded Garber and a script that sparkles with wit and great characters. And one of the best endings ever. This one, just... ends.
