Film is Pwn

The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 is, if you pardon the obsolete and thoroughly inappropriate jargon, a darn, tootin’ good thriller, a change-up from the usual Summer blockbuster, franchise spawning, comic book based, TV show adapted, mega special effects extravaganza.  Don’t misunderstand me, there’s a big budget here complete with gunfire and big ol’ car crashes and big stars — they don’t get much bigger than Denzel Washington — but attraction here is the story and the interplay between the antagonist and protagonist.

The plot revolves around a hostage situation on a New York City subway car, the titular Pelham 1-2-3, which is seized by a skilled team with a plan to extort the city for $10 million dollars.  John Travolta is Ryder, the lead villain, with plenty of opportunities to chew the scenery - I think over-the-top villains are the only roles where I enjoy John Travolta performances, with the sizable, migraine inducing exception of Battlefield Earth.  *Shudder*

The protagonist is a mild mannered civil servant named Garber (Washington), the dispatcher who takes the call from Ryder.  Ryder refuses to talk to the hostage negotiator (John Turturro) and insists on dealing with Garber, for unknown reasons.  Garber is an everyman type of hero, cool under pressure but with a huge skeleton in his closet that Ryder tries to exploit.

The give and take between Garber and Ryder is most of the fun, with Garber doing his best to draw precious information about the unknown hostage-taker and Ryder playing all manner of mind games with Garber and the rest of the city.  There’s a lot of other neat stuff in the periphery with the supporting players as well.  James Gandolfini is the disaffected Mayor of New York, impatiently waiting for his term to expire so he can retire — I don’t remember the Mayor’s name, but let’s call him “Gudy Ruliani”.  I loved John Turturro’s understated hostage negotiator forced to use Garber as the point of contact with Ryder; Turturro is suspicious that Garber might be involved even as he’s coaching him on how to save lives.

Since this is a clever, Hollywood film, it shouldn’t surprise anyone when the bad guys’ motives might be a bit more complex than simply ransoming random citizens, but I shall say no more.  I did walk out of the theater thinking that knowing Ryder’s ultimate goals make his method of achieving them seem unnecessarily risky.  I.e., I could think of a dozen ways the character could get the job done with the resources at hand without once risking his neck, but we’ll let it slide for the sake of the good movie.

One thing drove me nuts when it happened, as the cops race money to the isolated train to meet Ryder’s deadline, under penalty of dead hostages, which provides an exciting race against time, complete with some spectacular crashes.  But the obvious question is posed on screen by the Mayor as it looks as though they might not make the literal deadline: “Why didn’t we use a helicopter?”  The reaction of the other characters is, and I paraphrase, “d’oh!”  Now, I’m sure the screenwriter threw in this moment not only as some levity but also to explain why the most obvious mode of transit is not taken, even if that explanation is, “We didn’t think of it!”  But do you mean to tell me New York’s Finest would shut down the city’s traffic, block off intersections to allow a convoy with $10 million to pass, and not even consider that they could use a helicopter??????  But I digress . . .

The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 is a Tony Scott film, marking the fourth time Denzel and Scott have collaborated (Crimson Tide, Man on Fire, and Deja Vu were the previous releases).  Scott is a director who’s carved out a adrenalized, gritty style that involves rapid fire cuts infused with digital graphics.  The effect is often annoying detracts from the film (see: Domino, though I’d honestly recommend you never see: Domino) and sometimes it adds to the experience (see: Enemy of the State).  The Scott-style is there in the Taking of Pelham 1-2-3, but here it works, restrained to tracking the path of the money to the hostage situation and counting down to zero on Ryder’s imposed deadline.

All in all, this is one of the better Tony Scott flicks to date.  I don’t think it’s good enough to justify running out to the theater, but hey, if you want to see a movie, this is the second best theatrical release I’ve seen this Summer, behind the awesome Star Trek reboot. (In fairness, the only other two I’ve seen are Angels & Demons and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, so that’s not as big of a compliment as it might sound on the surface.

–Daniel J. Roos