The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

Although it's been a while since I watched this, I seem to recall enjoying it more than the 4.+ rating it has here. However, I also remember thinking "why?" Aside from some minor updates (the original's $1,000,000 ransom isn't much in 1998; more racial & gender diversity among the main players; the expunging of the Mayor character entirely which served only as comic relief in the original) the movie stuck so closely to the original that I had to wonder "why?" Why remake a great thriller unless you have something new to add? (Cape Fear for instance) While this certainly wasn't a waste of my time, and was in fact an entertaining evening of television, if given the choice, just watch the original. My only guess as to why this was made as it was, is because there are people who refuse to watch anything "old" and thus would rather watch a "new" version with current actors.

A cold murderous high jacker with three associates, takes a train and holds it and its passengers hostage, killing one at a time to obtain a large ransom. Based on an earlier film of the same title, which I have not viewed, this TV version suffers a little from modest budgets and a less than sterling cast. Vincent d'Onofrios, as the senior high jacker, a quirky rather wooden actor at best, fleetingly looking like a young Orson Welles, does what he can to provide sinister menace to his role, while Edward James Olmos is not a very impressive substitute for the formidable Walter Matthau. However it is fair to comment this is a reasonable thriller for TV, and the grainy dark underground railway sequences are quite suspenseful. Makes me keen to see the original film.

Keeping up with the times this 1998 remake of The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three had to change certain things and deliberately changed others. One indisputable fact was that in 1998 the New York City Transit Police had ceased being a separate entity and was now just part of the NYPD. Hence Walter Matthau's character as a Transit Cop would not have existed any longer. For this version Edward James Olmos is not only a regular NYPD detective, but he's a hostage negotiator specialist.

The change out the Transit Police was necessary, but part of what made the first version work so well was Walter Matthau being placed in a situation he wouldn't normally be dealing with. In that version in fact he's shepherding a bunch of Japanese railroad people around the Transit Authority Command Center when the hijacking occurs.

Instead of Jerry Stiller as his partner, Olmos is paired with Lorraine Bracco, certainly women by that time were doing more than administrative work in the NYPD. The mysterious head of the four hijackers is Vincent Donofrio on the other side of the law. We don't know who he is, but he certainly didn't have the air of mystery that soldier of fortune Robert Shaw did in the Seventies. In fact we never really find out anything about Donofrio.

The plot follows pretty much the story in the original version. Since it was shot in Toronto, the streets of New York where a lot of the excitement above ground as the City tries to meet the hijackers deadline is missing from this version.

Seeing Donofrio and Olmos makes me wish for Matthau and Shaw. Maybe the new version that will have Denzel Washington and John Travolta as antagonists will be better.

I don't think this 1998 remake was too bad, provided you regard it as a straightforward hostage film.

It uses some of the best lines from the original almost verbatim (eg, "A person likes to know how much he's worth", "Do they still have the death penalty in New York" "I've always done my own killing" etc) which is ok, but I can't believe that Mr Blue in the 1998 film would not know the death penalty status in what appears to be his native New York. In the original, the Mr Blue character was clearly British, and might be excused for not knowing the death penalty status in all 50 US states.

But as one other observer observed, the 1998 lacks .... WALLY MATTHAU (and to some extend George Costanza's dad also).

The 74 version could almost have been sold as a comedy, but not this one. It's a straightforward tradesman like version without the wit, irony, pathos and dulcet tones of Wally Matthau

Certainly worth watching if you love the 74 version so you can do a 'compare and contrast'. If you have not watched either, and you only want to see one of them, see the 74 version.

The final scene is worth the wait (in both versions)

One of my all time favorite movies was this movie back in the theatrical version in 1974. This TV version was awful. It was a perfect example of a movie that did not need to be remade. I could not wait for it to end as I was bored silly. There was absolutely no chemistry between the characters. I hope this movie gets "shelved" forever.