The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3

It’s not really fair comparing this with the much more sophisticated 1974 version of this story as Tony Scott has taken a fairly broad-brush to that template and pretty much re-characterised the whole story. That’s a story about a gang of well organised criminals who plan a daring hijack of a subway train in New York, USA. Their plan is simple enough. They seize one car and then their leader “Ryder” (John Travolta) demands $10 millions within the hour or the bodies will start mounting up. His contact in the control room is “Garber” (Denzel Washington) and soon wheels are in motion to get the cash. What’s not so clear, though, is just what the agenda of these criminals is. It’s not an excessively large sum of money and we know that “Garber” is under investigation for bribery, so is there something more sinister going on here? What is obvious is that these guys mean business and are not afraid to demonstrate that fact! Tony Scott has managed to convey something of the claustrophobic nature of the tunnels well here and Harry Gregson-Williams’s aggressive score also helps build the tension but for me, Travolta just doesn’t deliver anything on the scale of menace I wanted here. Sure, his character is vile and violent but with the story relying on a degree of ambiguity for much of it’s substance, his unsubtle and charm-free performance is all just too one-dimensional to keep the intrigue sustained. Washington, likewise, just doesn’t impose himself on the story anywhere near enough to give us any real sense of panic and the other  supporting efforts are all a bit too underwhelming too, delivering a great deal of wasteful shouty dialogue as this thing rather lumbers along as if it were stuck at the lights, too. It probably didn’t need remaking but it does remind you just how good Robert Shaw was on the less is more front.