L'incident

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.

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!

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

This film is a parable. I first saw a really lousy print 20 years ago in high school ethics class. I've since taped it off of cable and have shown it to several friends over the years and they are always knocked out by the portrayal of grittiness for the time period. Indeed, this film still feels contemporary.

Those who judge it on the basis of "what I would do in this situation is..." are really off base. First of all, one of the compelling aspects of The Incident is that it develops each character's weakness so that we not only relate to these very identifiable human frailties (which runs the gamut from racism, submissiveness, marital strife, homosexuality, et. al.), but we also understand their particular reasons for not standing up to the thugs. Of course, just because we identify does not excuse the passengers' behavior (or, should we say, failure to act), which is exactly the ethical dilemma presented by the film. Secondly, it is supposed to infuriate and anger us as viewers. As anyone who has worked in or around the law profession knows, the cowardice depicted here is nothing unusual, nor is it unique to NYC. People under stress behave in ways that often boggle the imagination. Remember the stories from the Titanic, for example, about how some passengers acted dutifully and bravely, while others did inexplicably selfish things? The passage of time has not changed human nature.

The ensemble cast is a fantastic whos-who of up & comers from the period. Even Ed McMahon puts in a fully capable performance! The real stand-outs here, however, are certainly Musante, Sheen & Bridges. I'm not familiar with Musante's work on the old TV show `Toma,' but I am disappointed his career never blossomed on the big screen because he's a revelation here. The nature of his character allows him to emote humor, phony compassion and violence, and he succeeds without becoming a maniacal cartoon. And even though we don't know his character's back story, his expressions exude a personal history of frustration that has given way to toughness, hatred and eventually an unstable and violent temper. This, of course, is his character's ultimate weakness. Who knows, maybe Tarantino will give Musante a ring one of these days.

As I watched this movie this evening, it affected me like a good movie should. In this one, Martin Sheen and Tony Musante are 2 hoodlums who board a subway car and proceed to terrorize/harass the various occupants riding this car. Psychologically, it accomplishes what the director sets out to: Provoke/Stir up Emotions in the viewer. In particular, the atrocities committed against the gay man and Black couple are disturbing, especially given the era in which this film was produced. I was driven to anger watching the responses of the characters. Beau Bridges, Martin Sheen, and Donna Mills are interesting to watch in this film. The ending is something to see, and the very ending provokes some questions to the summation of this film. Recommended to see.