Pelham 1 2 3 - Ostaggi in metropolitana

"Taking of Pelham 123" was the movie that had it all. A great director in Tony Scott, screenwriter in Brian Helgeland (Man on Fire, LA Confidential), and leading men in Denzel Washington and John Travolta each doing what they do best. To its credit, Washington and Travolta keep it afloat. This is the kind of movie both can do in their sleep and watching them go one on one with each other is the film's main bright spot. Were also in for a pretty exciting ride as Tony Scott swings his camera around New York city streets and underground subway tunnels. Though this remake of the 1974 film starring Walter Mathau and Robert Shaw proves to be a little less than the sum of its parts.

Washington plays Walter Garber, the chief detective for the MTA currently involved in some controversy over a bribe he may or may not have taken. While that's being worked out, he's been reassigned to desk duty as dispatcher in the subway command center. Just today will be a day unlike any other as armed men hijack a New York City subway 6 train and hold all of its passengers hostage. The leader of the hi-jackers wishes to be called Ryder (John Travolta), and tells Walter that he wants 10 million dollars within an hour or he will start executing hostages. The cops (led by John Turturro) are brought in but Walter remains as the lead negotiator at Ryder's request.

Short on actual plot, I was expecting more of a character driven movie and early on it appears to go in that direction. There is a great scene where Ryder puts Walter on trial for the bribe and it leads you to think that these two are going to butt heads in dialogue-driven scenes all day long, exposing each other for who they really are. Just the battle of wits ends there, which is unfortunate cause the movie really crackles whenever they talk to each other. Travolta, sporting a menacing goatee and tattoo, is at his over-the-top, f-bomb-dropping, lunatic best and Washington is his level-headed, average-guy adversary.

The rest is all action. Car crashes and shoot-outs take place, the car crashes coming within a sloppy scene where the police travel by motorcade to deliver the money and the shoot-out starting from a rat crawling up a guy's leg of all things. Both feature no important characters and situations that are manipulated. The finale comes before you know it, a chase through the streets of NY that's more exciting because it makes more sense. And Tony Scott, despite using clichés like counting down the clock and going into slow-motion, keeps the movie gritty and fast-paced. As for the rest of the cast, James Gandolfini, playing a New York Mayor, is good comic relief, getting jokes about Giuliani, subways, and the Yankees but Turturro and Luis Guzman, playing a disgruntled MTA employee working with Ryder, don't get much to do.

"Pelham" works pretty well as a thriller because the Tony Scott-Denzel Washington teaming (this is their fourth go-around) always seems to do so and adding Travolta, always fun as a villain, is another nice touch. Just it doesn't always leave you engaged in what's happening, whether because the plot or the action lacks humanity. Still it's held together by good acting and solid direction and for that alone it's worth a ride.

This urban crime drama is a diverting entry with plenty of action, tense moments and running dialogue to sustain interest for the duration of the film. The main plot is a hostage situation and a demand for an outrageous sum of money. Denzel Washington and John Travolta spar throughout the picture and play off each other very well. Denzel, as always, is great and Travolta makes a good heavy although some of his one-liners fall flat as he negotiates with Washington. There are several interesting scenes of the trains, subway stations, tunnels, track beds and elevated sequences where the action takes place. Some of the street-level scenes, involving taxi and police car stunts don't seem to be necessary. Cast and camera work are very nice.

I was surprised to find this remake of the 1974 thriller was actually pretty good. I thought that, because it was a remake by an explosion-happy director (Tony Scott) and starred ultraham John Travolta, it couldn't possibly be all that interesting. Maybe a mild diversion, but those are a dime a dozen during the summer. But hey, big shock! It's actually pretty tense, with just enough twistiness to fascinate without seeming implausible.

Of course, the biggest reason the movie succeeds is Denzel Washington. Washington plays a disgraced (investigation pending) transit executive who's currently slumming as the control chief. On his shift, naturally, a 1:23 train out of Pelham (New York City) suddenly stops in the middle of its run, and a hijacker demands $10 million to be delivered in exactly one hour, or passengers start dying unnaturally.

What makes this a little more than your typical cat-and-mouse game is the undercurrent of what's gotten Washington character into hot water, as well as Travolta's character's actual motives. After all, he's just grabbed a subway full of hostages, but obviously he can't just ride the car to Cuba, or something. He has to have an escape plan.

Washington and Travolta play off each other very nicely, with Washington's flawless portrayal of a flawed man far more convincing than Travolta's garden-variety unhinged wacko. Essentially, Washington was good enough to counterbalance Travolta's overacting. (Is he crazy, or is he just cleverly acting crazy? Who cares?) Washington's Walter Garber is unsure of himself, an actual Everyman thrust into a madman's master plan. It's roles like these that separate Washington from people like, say, Tom Cruise, guys who can play really only one character, the Man Who Knows Everything. Walter Garber not only isn't a "seize the day" kind of person, he shies away from confrontations he knows he can't win.

Also worth noting are John Turturro (as a hostage negotiator displaced by Washington, since Travolta won't talk to anyone else) and James Gandolfini (as Hizzoner, finally playing a mayor who's not a complete nitwit). Gone is the whimsical naming convention from the first, in which Robert Shaw named his comrades after colors, which was swiped by Quentin Tarantino for Reservoir Dogs. There are some changes from the original, true, but they don't seem contrived; for example, Walter Matthau was a transit cop in the 1974 version, not some under-investigation suit.

The action is tense throughout, especially since you assume that the hijackers are going to have to murder someone at some point (otherwise, why have a deadline?) Somehow, the movie manages to be gripping and realistic without being over the top. There are some minor bouts of nonsense (did we really need to know that Garber needed to bring home a gallon of milk?), and maybe in the final 20 minutes or so it's a little by the numbers in its approach to action, but overall it's not bad at all. It's certainly a lot better than I'd expect a John Travolta movie to be, but maybe that's because he's the bad guy here, and they're practically expected to be over the top.

It started like any ordinary day; that's likely what N.Y.C. subway dispatcher Walter Garber, an employee of questionable character, was thinking when he got up and went to work in the morning. Little did he know that he'd become the confidant and "stand-in" hostage negotiator for a prickly criminal mastermind who takes over the Pelham subway train and demands money in exchange for the lives of its passengers. Hearing the names Washington, Travolta, and Scott creates a lot of anticipation, but unfortunately what wants to be a slick combination of suspense thriller and character study instead results in a ponderous film with a weak setup, predictable plot twists, shallow characters, and little tension. It's easy to watch with actors of Washington and Travolta's caliber at work, but Scott's direction is pretentious and throws out some obligatory action scenes that seem to exist for the sole purpose of padding the time on the way to an expected climax. The leads do what they can with the strained material but really deserve better. **

A surprisingly enjoyable and tense thriller. While it does have a good bit of the kind of silly excess that ruins most summer blockbuster movies anymore, those flaws are overshadowed by the tightly-wound script and a couple of good performances from Denzel Washington and John Travolta. Director Tony Scott seems to have spent a good bit of effort trying to channel the spirit of 1970's American movies, and often this pays dividends as the focus on grittiness over spectacular action sequences ups the suspense. It's interesting that as the movie approaches the end you can feel the director's 21st century comic-book instincts straining against the genre he's working in as the story becomes increasingly less believable and more "heroic."

Nevertheless I can recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys a suspenseful action movie that doesn't beat you over the head with histrionics from beginning to end. Admittedly I've never seen the original, and I can easily imagine those who love it might be substantially less enthusiastic about this remake.