Director: Tony Scott (Top Gun, True Romance, Domino, Deja Vu)
Novel: John Godey
Screenplay: Brian Helgeland
Producers: Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal, Tony Scott, Steve Tisch
Starring: Denzel Washington, John Travolta, John Turturro, Luis Guzmán, James Gandolfini
MPAA Rating: R
Running time: 95 min.

(1/5)

When the decision to remake Sargent’s 1974 crime flick, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, was announced a lot of people were asking “why?” while a lot of others were asking “why not?”. As quite the Tony Scott fan (yes, even Domino), I was certainly in the latter category and just happy to see another Scott film on the big screen. I promised myself I would watch Pelham on its own terms, without comparing it too much with the original. Impossible.

The plot is pretty much identical to the 1974 version of the tale. A group of bad guys bossed by a guy calling himself Ryder (Travolta) hijack a NYC subway line and hold it and the people aboard for ransom ($10,000,000) within the darkened tunnel of the NY underground. Their main radio contact is control operator Garber (Denzel), who is essentially a nobody just drinking his coffee and running the train switch board. It’s obvious right away he’s a smart guy, just assigned to a dead-end job. When the train is hijacked, Garber happens to be the guy assigned to the radio at the time and is therefore by default the liaison between Ryder and the hostage negotiators. As the negotiation continues, Ryder develops somewhat of a fetish for Garber and won’t speak with anyone else – eventually working it out so that Garber is the one who must deliver the money when the time comes. Insert action scenes.

Let’s point out the elephant in the room right away. All of the nuance, substance, richness and fun from the original have all been stripped away. As an example, color code names for the criminal gang are gone and aside from the Luis Guzman character (who is completely wasted here) they’re simply faceless mannequins serving a purpose and I’m not even sure how many of them there were. The group dynamic of the hijackers in the original is what makes them interesting. With Scott’s version, I don’t even care what goes on in the subway car; none of it matters and none of it is fun or interesting. And that’s just one fun aspect of many that has been pummeled to the ground in exchange for formula.

So instead of focusing on the heist (or the “man with the plan” scenario) and the action, we’re basically subjected to a “psych 101-off” between Ryder and Garber for a total of about 80 minutes. The entire movie is basically a swirling shit storm that no one cares about to encircle this hackneyed, typical and cliché mano y mano of wits over a radio. To make an attempt at making it a little more interesting, Scott has inserted a careless and needless back story to Denzel’s character. He may or may not have done something ethically questionable in his past and this gives Ryder some leverage whilst negotiating. This entire exchange between Garber and Ryder feels like it’s been done a thousand times and it was tiresomely lacking in heart or emotion… or intrigue. Put simply, it’s formulaic and stupid.

Now let’s talk about Tony Scott’s very auteur style of film making for a second. For the last half decade or so, Scott has begun to define himself as a little bit of a thinking man’s version of Michael Bay. I enjoyed the bombastic flare of Domino and the interesting things it had to say within an over-the-top storyline. I like the high contrast (blue/green-ish) color scheme of Deja Vu and its interesting look at time travel and the sci-fi way of solving a crime. In fact, I like the theoretically possible device in Deja Vu a lot more than the unexplainable talking in Minority Report. But I digress. With Pelham, it feels like Tony Scott is trying too hard to be Tony Scott. The movie is almost a caricature of his own style and some of it is actually laughable. The over-reliance on style and lack of anything resembling interesting depth is the overlying factor that permeates this movie’s motives and leaves a healthy scar across the summer blockbuster schedule of 2009.

Possibly knowing that the rest of his movie sucks, Scott tries to salvage whatever he can by focusing on the two big names and their acting prowess. You can tell that Travolta and Washington are really trying to "bring it", but it simply comes down to whether you like these guys as actors in their typical roles or not. Remember Broken Arrow and Face/Off? Yeah, Travolta is that guy again; with tattoos. Like Tony Scott’s style, Travolta’s Ryder character is an over-the-top, bordering on reckless psycho that has no intrigue or mystery about him. He’s simply a crazy guy with a gun and an attitude (this is not Hans Gruber (Die Hard) or Pelham’s original character played by Robert Shaw). And other than his seemingly deep knowledge of finance, he doesn’t even seem particularly intelligent. Meanwhile, Washington very often plays cops or some sort of character with leadership qualities. Scott attempts to put him in sort of the everyman role here, but Garber is too intelligent and charismatic to stick with that persona for too long. Eventually, you know this will end up being “Detective” Washington at some point. And sure enough. So both Denzel and Travolta work well enough for what they are assigned to do; problem is, that isn’t much.

The rest of the movie simply felt like cut scenes from a bad video game. The dialogue is painfully eye-rolling and rote. Most of the minor plot devices are incredibly lazy. Instead of a grueling, location to location search of an investigation as to who these criminals might be, a guy on the train simply has a laptop with a camera that he broadcasts all of the goings-on within the train to the police. That way, the police can surmise exactly who the bad guys are and their entire past in a matter of minutes. Again, lazy. Later a sniper doesn’t get a clean shot off because just as he pulls the trigger a rat bites him in the leg. I mean, c’mon.

Then there’re the corny and clumsy imagery and/or lifeless action. Turturro saluting Garber from a helicopter almost made me vomit. Car crashes and gunfire are simple and ineffective at eliciting any kind of excitement or emotion. In short, the movie is basically a boring rehash of hundreds of cop vs. bad guy movies of the past fifty years. Let me say it again, boring.

Usually a Tony Scott defender, bordering on apologist, I could just barely stomach this picture. I seriously pondered leaving the theater for maybe only the second time in my life at the 3/4 mark. I give it a point for one or two moments and as typical as Washington is here, I still like watching him perform. And sure, Garber has a first name in this version: Walter (an obvious tip of the hat to Pelham’s original Garber, Walter Mathau). Otherwise, this is a thoughtless and disagreeable attempt at updating an old classic. Had it just been titled “Trainjack” or something similar, I may be able to overlook the movie as just another throwaway action picture. But stealing the title from a great movie and tacking it on to your shitpile doesn’t make it smell any better. It only succeeds in attracting more flies.