The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3

[June 10th, 2009]

Like a 40-handicap golfer or a special-needs student, director Tony Scott must be graded on a curve. His remake of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is forgettable and perfunctory—but it does not contain loving slow-motion shots of incinerated terrorism victims (Déjà Vu) or Denzel Washington detonating an explosive in a corrupt police official’s rectum (Man on Fire). It doesn’t actively debase the sensibilities of anyone who watches it. By most standards, it’s serviceable hackwork; in the canon of Tony Scott, it’s Wild Strawberries.

The emotional hook is consistent with previous Scott-Washington collaborations: Everyman Denzel comes to the defense of imperiled innocents. Everything else is recycled from the 1974 hijacked-subway-car thriller The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, a gritty B-picture notable for marking the beginning (and end) of Walter Matthau’s career as an action star. The remake doesn’t inflate the original stakes: The conspirators still want only to take the money and run. This leaves transit dispatcher Washington, filmed by a circling camera, looking perplexed. Why don’t these criminals saw off their hostages’ fingers, or douse them in gasoline? Don’t they have any imagination?

But the hijacking’s mastermind is a simple man. Played by John Travolta with a horseshoe mustache that makes him look ready to guest star on American Chopper, he behaves like a petulant Vinnie Barbarino who happens to shoot conductors in the chest and harbor a selective racism toward Italians. Most of the movie is Travolta and Washington trading demands and counteroffers in crisp exchanges, each side trying to determine how much information he can safely reveal. Since Scott shows the hostages only as much as necessary to exploit their endangerment, the negotiations are exactly as exciting as watching these two actors play hands of Texas hold ’em.

In the case of Washington, this isn’t a bad deal: Even in terrible roles (and considering he works nearly annually with Tony Scott, his judgment in jobs is questionable), he excels in appearing to think on the fly, and his seeming improvisations carry the film. At the end of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, he wears the contented smile of a man who has earned his municipal paycheck, and why not? He’s put in an honest day’s work. R.