The latest Hollywood remake rolls down the tracks – and with Tony Scott at the wheel you just know The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is going to be an out of control juggernaut.
Released in 1974, the original Pelham was a cracking thriller that pitted Walter Matthau’s grouchy New York Transit Authority cop against Robert Shaw’s ruthless crook in a tense and mordant battle of wits.
The set up of the new movie is the same as before: four gunmen hijack a crowded New York subway train – Pelham 123 – and demand a huge ransom to be paid within the hour ($10million, inflation-adjusted from the original’s $1million). Fail to meet the deadline and one passenger will die for every minute that the money is late.
Instead of the standoff, however, between Matthau’s cop and Shaw’s gang leader ‘Mr Blue’ (his cohorts were ‘Grey’ ‘Green’ and Brown’, which is where Tarantino nicked the idea for Reservoir Dogs’ colour-coded criminals), the remake sets Denzel Washington’s diffident train dispatcher against John Travolta’s volatile hijacker.
Brian Helgeland’s script gives both men back-stories. Washington’s desk jockey Walter Garber (the name a nod to Matthau) is a transit executive who’s been demoted to train dispatcher pending the outcome of a bribery investigation, and Travolta’s ‘Ryder’… well, his past takes a while longer to emerge, by which time the duo are deep into the mind games that made the original so gripping.
So far, so good. The fidgety Scott, however, was never going to be content with a duel of verbal thrust and parry between antagonists stuck on opposite ends of a phone – Travolta’s hijacker on the train; Washington the poor sap in the subway control centre. No, you can tell Scott is just itching to whip things into a frenzy – with the result that the movie goes completely off the rails.
You can pinpoint the exact moment the film falls apart. With the clock ticking away, Washington’s unassuming everyman strides towards a waiting helicopter, and takes time out to conduct a tender phone conversation with his wife (hurry up, man, the hostages are about to die!). Then we’re up in the air (great view, Tony), Denzel’s on his way to becoming an action hero (groan) and Scott is going to get the chance to indulge in car chases and shoot-outs (even bigger groan).
All this means there’s no room for the original film’s quirky supporting characters. Save for the leads, the only figures who make much of an impression are John Turturro’s canny NYPD negotiator and James Gandolfini’s stinking-rich mayor. The stars do play well off each other – Washington, packing a few extra pounds, holds back, while a pumped-up Travolta, sporting prison-inmate tattoos and porn-star moustache, goes deliriously over the top. Travolta describes the new film as “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three on steroids”. On steroids?! Is it any surprise the movie’s a train wreck?
Released 31st July.
To activate the sound in the trailer: hold your cursor over the screen to reveal the control panel and click on the volume control in the bottom right-hand corner.
Big groan is right… I saw the trailer for this and that was enough for me.. Why oh why can’t they just leave the classics alone.
And Travolta going OTT as a psychotic nutcase? So what else is new. Face-Off was fab, but I’m getting a tad bored with it now.
Walt and Bob are surely turning in their graves as we speak.
And one more thing, since when do train dispatchers deal with hostage situations? A minor point I know, but I think the RMT should have a little word with Mr Scott.
Oh dear, where do I begin. Perhaps if I’d entered the cinema with low expectations and no knowledge of the original (there was an adequate TV version too) I may have been satisfied (just). However, this was not the case, and comparison to the ’70s gem staring Matthau, Balsam and Shaw led to a sinking feeling of let-down. Whereas the original was driven by character actors at the top of their game and an amusingly snappy script, this effort was hamperred by being a vehicle for two ageing überstars, who frankly have seen better days (and scripts), and the Tony Scott treatment of crash, bang, wallop of chases, shoot-outs and what appeared to be a large budget which just had to be spent. The little humour which remained of the original was vestigial and poorly rendered. Even Turturro, an actor of talent and class depicted a barely one-dimensional fed simply idling through the motions via F, B and I.
Perhaps a youngster with no knowledge of this film’s excellent forebear would be entertained, but this child-of-the-sixties was not impressed at all. I think I’m about to sneeze…
Gesundheit!