O Incidente

The plot is simple: Late night subway riders are terrorized by 2 thugs out for kicks. The thugs jam the subway doors so no one can get on or off and the conductor never visits the car. It really makes the viewer feel trapped with the rest of the victims, who are, by the way, pretty standard stereotypes of everyday America. There's the teenagers in love who are always kissing, the black man with a chip on his shoulder about white America and his social worker wife who pleads for him to not be so angry, two servicemen on their way to or back from an assignment and one has his arm in a cast, the harried married couple with a sleeping child, the elderly Jewish couple, the alcoholic, the squabbling couple, a man who may or may not be homosexual, a sleeping bum, and that may or may not be all. Tony Musante as the creepier of the two tough guys is well played. He has venom dripping off of him like a coiled serpent about to strike. His villainy is so real you I sometimes wondered if he was acting or just really mean in person. Martin Sheen, of all people, plays the other tough guy, who seems like he is drawn along by the lead of his pal into the mental and physical games they play on the other subway riders. The two laugh a lot at the misfortunes of their sport and as you watch you wonder if there is a happy ending in sight or is this one of those movies where nobody goes home happy, not even the viewer. The movie is in stark black and white and made better by that fact. In the shadows behind each characters eyes you see a universe of fear and loathing but you keep looking for a positive sign. A very well made movie with my only quibble being that the set up is kinda long. We see each person making it to the fateful subway car and learn their back history. If this film were remade today I can see this entire section being dropped. We could start right in on the subway and use flashbacks to illuminate the histories. But that's just me.

It's the subway ride we all dread, closed in for many minutes with street hoods. In the early a.m hours, petty criminals (Martin Sheen, Tony Musante) board a crowded subway train after mugging a helpless old man. Inbetween subway stops, the hoods terrorize the passengers in the subway car. They hit upon the women, taunt the male passengers into fights. Finally, a young man in uniform (Beau Bridges) becomes the first to defend themselves, and gets into a harrowing fight with Musante. One of the first attempts at a low budget independent film. Director Larry Pearce gets excellent performances out of the all-star cast. Some of the dialog is a rather forced, cliched, and the time period between subway stops go on way too long. But there are fine moments (Musante verbally tearing apart passenger Brock Peters, Sheen scaring the daylights out of boarding passengers when the subway DOES stop) The film makes one think of the more exciting, and more thought out "Taking Of Pelham One Two Three (1974)"

I remember seeing this film in the movie theaters when it came out in 1967. I had gone with a couple of friends to see it. This movie so infuriated all three of us (there was my friend's wife too) at first of all the passivity of all the passengers and how nobody cared to help anyone else and then there were the two hooligans (Musante and Sheen) and their arrogance and their not respecting other people's space or privacy. With this film, you get to see how each and every person works in a terrifying situation.

I was so happy this film was finally released on video. I have been waiting for over 30 years to see it again to see if my opinions had changed--and they hadn't.

How did this little film slip between the cracks? This amazing film deserves mountains of more credit than it gets. It's a very real, brutal film that really tests our emotions.

It did to me, at least. The acting job (especially of the two leads) was phenomenal! Especially, by far, Martin Sheen.

The cinematography, the vicious personalities of the two street punks, the music, well... basically everything flat out works. Haven't we all felt like one of the passengers? Or maybe even like one of the hoodlums?

Great film. 10/10

I caught this movie on AMC at 3 o'clock this morning (or so), and was blown away! What a tense, gritty drama - and what a cast! I was trying to figure out who was who, as they were all so young (Ed McMahon? Donna Mills? Ruby Dee without Ossie Davis? Wow!) Martin Sheen's baby face made his psycho character all the more frightening. To me, the movie is a great time capsule of the sixties, and of New York. I do have a complaint to register regarding the AMC channel - instead of squeezing the end credits to make room for commercials for the next movie, how about staying true to your movie fans who have a compulsive need to read the credits, and show them full-screen to the end? Who's with me on this one? Thank goodness for IMDb to get us through!