Movie review: The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3

by John P. Meyer

I received a summons instructing me to proceed on June 9 to the George Allen Courthouse, where it would be my duty to languish in jury-pool Purgatory while the cosmic lottery which settles such matters decided whether or not I'd be obliged to serve. (Yes, I realize this is an unusual lead for a film review, but bear with me.)

I took the DART train from White Rock Station to downtown. Having just seen Tony Scott's remake of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (and being unaccustomed to riding the DART train) I couldn't help but think about the film as we pulled into the tunnel south of Mockingbird Station. (Call me paranoid, just don't call me late for happy hour.)

In one of those odd incidences of synchronicity, I had decided to load up my Kindle with the latest Lee Child thriller, which - unbeknownst to me at the time - opens with a gripping scene which takes place in - you guessed it - the subway.

(My DART light rail excursion proved entirely uneventful, just FYI - and I was not selected to serve on a jury.) But enough of my weird and rambling cognitive perambulations.

The first thing you'll notice about Tony Scott's remake of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is just how much is going on. I don't mean with the characters, or the story - I'm talking about the camera.

Accompanied by a high-energy, electric-jolting score, director of photography Tobias Schliessler (Hancock, Dreamgirls) delivers what might be referred to as flashdance cinematography. The film transport speeds up and slows down; the restless camera zooms, pans, circles and strobes incessantly, while on the screen our protagonists' roles are quickly (and cleverly) established. No time to lose, is the underlying implication.

Those protagonists include a sinistered-up (via Fu Manchu mustache, improbably-long sideburns and gangsterish buzz cut) John Travolta as a character named Ryder; and a working stiff transit employee named Walter Garber (Denzel Washington, who appears to have put on a few pounds for the sedentary role - or for whatever reason). There are subsidiary characters in play, but it will be the interaction between these two which determines whether the film's dramatic action carries the day in terms of watchability - and thus box office.

The good news is that the chemistry between Ryder and Garber is indeed palpable and dangerously edgy - even though most of their interaction occurs through the EM spectrum over phone lines.

Walter's workplace is located in a transit command center that's so teched-out it could easily be part of the Strategic Air Command (ref. the operational touchscreen in Minority Report). It's from here that Walter discovers that one of his underground trains has made an unscheduled and apparently unnecessary stop. It's when he tries to contact the train motorman (Gary Basaraba, as Jerry) that he discovers something's up beyond a simple mechanical glitch.

That something, of course, is Ryder and his team of hijackers, who are well-armed and clearly mean business. Speaking of mean, Travolta's Ryder really is just that: he's MEAN, MEAN, MEAN, I'm tellin' ya, in addition to being hysterically engaging - as he demonstrates by variously shooting (or threatening to shoot) subway passengers and trading witty and amusing (in a psycho-killer sort of way) banter with Garber, who's safely back at the barn trying to talk him out of it.

Well, not quite safely: turns out Garber has a skeleton in his own professional closet that gets some high-profile airing-out in the course of the life-and-death negotiations. Unfortunately for Garber, assorted federal agents and the Mayor of New York City (James Gandolfini, in a sly, politically-savvy and dandily-underplayed role) are leaning over his shoulder when the truth comes out. Major league bummer!

In terms of plotting, there's nothing particularly revolutionary in play here: the hijackers (who are, against all evidence to the contrary, constantly referred to by the single-minded media as "terrorists") are in it for the money - though their big payoff might come in a way that will surprise some viewers.

The film's primary dramatic tension is generated by the uncertainty of who among the criminals and hostages will (or won't) survive the day's perilous events. Scott ramps things up a notch late in the game by transforming Garber from a long-distance negotiator into a hands-on, finger-on-the-trigger field operative. The fact that he - Garber - seems so obviously uncomfortable in the role adds considerably to the film's believability. (In the service of this, Denzel's expanded midriff and clerk-ish horn rim glasses serve him well.)

The icing on the thriller cake comes in the form of a runaway train sequence reminiscent of the breathless Spidey II scene - with the critical difference being that Spidey won't be swinging in from the rafters this go-round.

Other players deserving special mention include John Turturro as a hostage negotiator named Camonetti who can take a situational lickin' and keep on tickin' - with nary a flinch. And then there's the versatile Luis Guzmán as Phil Ramos, a disgruntled former MTA employee who drives the train for the hijackers' team. Guzmán is nearly unrecognizable behind dark glasses and a nose bandage.

At 106 minutes, Pelham has time to develop its desperate characters and play them against each other to good effect, yet it's not so long that events begin to drag. In fact, there's never a dull moment - until the climactic, by-the-numbers tête-à-tête, whose outcome is never in question.