Review

Review Date: 14-June-09
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Just OK

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009)

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is a very romantic title. Perhaps that accounts for how this remake came to be (although in nineteen seventy-four the numbers were spelled out for the original). The title suits the story, which is a modern-day rendition of pirates boarding a vessel for ill-gotten gain. The vessel in question is a New York subway train packed with hostages whom the city has no choice but to ransom. You may think it foolish to attempt a major crime underground with few avenues for escape, but in both movies the perpetrators have it covered. The romanticism extends to the notion that people can be as mysterious and invisible in our overcrowded, technology-laden world as they once could on the high seas.

Besides the hijack plot, which comes equipped with a clock ticking down to murder and the occasional respite of humor, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 involves the convergence of two men: the mastermind of the crime and the recipient of his ransom request. The latter was a schlumpy transit cop played by Walter Matthau in the original; here he is a schlumpy veteran of the transit authority played by Denzel Washington. The role has been altered to give him more to do than wait and worry and to justify the magnitude of Washington's presence. He has spent his whole life in the subway trade working his way to the top only to be demoted under a cloud of suspicion to the desk of a traffic controller. Thus it is he who answers the call from the Pelham train and forms a strange bond with the hijacker, and this leads him to face his own transgressions.

The guy on the other end of the line is John Travolta, thick-necked, foul-mouthed, and saddled with the weak link of the film. Screenwriter Brian Helgeland swapped the cool and elegant sociopath once played by Robert Shaw for a character clearly meant to have more depth, but who amounts unfortunately to your basic shallow asshole. Travolta contorts himself to fit the movement of the plot. He is a troubled soul reaching out to Washington's solidity; no, a ruthless shark with dollar signs in his eyes; no, a dark angel who exists only to enable his co-star's catharsis. As the protagonist and chief bad guy, he should be the second-most interesting character at least. However, he falls short of both Washington and John Turturro in a rare heroic role as a hostage negotiator. The often manic Turturro is so good at sang froid that I might watch the train get taken again if he were the smoothie doing the deed.

Copyright © 2009 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.