As Jay-Z’s cover of Ice-T’s 99 Problems blares over the opening credits of Tony Scott’s The Taking of Pelham 123, the film was already in trouble; what a departure from David Shire’s classic harsh-jazz score that defined the original film.
And though I’ve admired Scott’s recent films and felt they’ve been largely underappreciated – Man on Fire, Domino, and to a lesser extent, Deja vu – the rest of Pelham confirmed what I had feared the most: here’s another pointless remake that strips the original film down to its bare essentials for an update, removing most of the flavor in the process. Gone is Walter Matthau’s ‘gesundheit’, gone are the color-coded criminals that Tarantino borrowed for Reservoir Dogs, gone is any sense to be made of the plot.
But if you’ve never seen or don’t remember Joseph Sargent’s 1973 film, well, this one should play just fine. Here’s a mostly taut and exciting thriller with a pair of fiery performances by Denzel Washington and John Travolta that only eventually loses its way as it stumbles towards a typical action movie-climax.
Washington stars as NYC subway dispatcher Walter Garber, who is in for a long day as the 1:23 train out of Pelham comes to a stop in the middle of a tunnel. He soon gets a call from Ryder (John Travolta), who, along with three other men (Luis Guzman’s Phil Ramos and two others who are barely recognized) has hijacked the Pelham train and demands 10 million dollars to be delivered in exactly one hour.
For every minute past the deadline, he’ll kill a hostage – there’s eighteen or so, but only five are given much of any screentime: the conductor, a guy with a laptop and a running webcam, a woman and her young boy, and the African-American man she turns to for help.
Hostage negotiator Lt. Camonetti (John Turturro) and the mayor (James Gandolfini) eventually show up, but Ryder isn’t having any of that: he’ll only talk to Garber. On top of Walter’s bad day, he’s also being investigated for possible bribe-taking. And now he’ll have to turn into an action superhero.
For two-thirds of the movie, this Pelham remake really works on its own terms: electric and fast-paced (IMDb tells me Pelham is 2 hours long, but it flies by), it grabs you and doesn’t let go. By the third act, however, as the fake-looking CGI train plows through NYC tracks, it crashes.
What’s up with the Garber character? “You don’t want to be talking to me,” he originally tells Ryder, “I’m just the guy on the other end of the line.” By the end of the movie, of course, this working class train dispatcher is single-handedly chasing Ryder down city streets with a loaded gun. When he fires the weapon, all credibility is gone and Scott has lost control of his movie.
The plot also takes a dive. In the original, the criminal hostage-taking was a straight cash grab; not so much here, in this age of Wall Street and terrorism, as Ryder’s master plan banks on contrivances surrounding both Wall Street and terrorism. You might cringe as the plot is kinda revealed towards the end, but good thing Scott doesn’t take the time to fully explain things, or he would have got a laugh.