Blood on the Tracks
In this subway series, the original Pelham wins
Want to know how a city works? Start by watching 1974Ns The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, a primer in which subway hijackers test how long itNll take a million bucks to pass through GothamNs plumbing. Turns out an hour is just enough time to roust the hated mayor out of bed, convince him that $1 million is cheap for the hostagesN sure votes, get the treasury on the horn and gridlock traffic by wrecking the drop-off car. And yet, in the end, a web of interlocked dysfunction from Gracie Mansion to the Transit Authority defeats the crooksN well-oiled machine.
At the time, the movie didnNt connect with audiences except, as legend has it, in cities with subways. Those without may have been less sympathetic—especially at the nadir of Fun CityNs crime-ridden mid-N70s image crisis, just a year before Gerald Ford told NY to drop dead. But in the years after 9/11, helped no doubt by shout-outs in Reservoir Dogs and the Beastie BoysN “Sure Shot,” The Taking of Pelham One Two Three took on new life—a parable of punch-clock New YorkersN surly resilience in the face of aggression.
With this second remake of Pelham (the first was a late-N90s TV rehash starring Edward James Olmos and Vincent DNOnofrio), director Tony Scott turns a presciently post-9/11 movie into an explicitly post-9/11 movie. Make that post-post-9/11: The chief bad guy only looks like a terrorist, when in fact heNs an even scarier, more au courant foe—a commodities trader! (Hey, some ticket buyers might actually have sympathy for a terrorist.) But if self-conscious stabs at significance donNt sound like as much fun as the originalNs unpretentious caper thrills, thatNs because theyNre not.
ThatNs not to say this Pelham never makes it out of the station, even if its near-constant pummeling-by-montage is a losing swap for the N74 PelhamNs urbane black humor. If not for that dull TV version a decade ago, which packed all the excitement of buying tokens, it would be tempting to call the basic outline of John GodeyNs novel indestructible: Four gunmen seize a subway car and its passengers and demand a fortune in one hour, while a transit official, stalling for time, plays head games with the gangNs mastermind.
In the original, the transit rep was grouchy Walter Matthau, embodying a spirit of sourpuss resistance. His part has been reconceived for Denzel Washington, whose Walter Garber is more of a turning worm, a disgraced official who has been busted back down to the rank and file. HeNs the poor bastard who picks up a call from the crimeNs ringleader, Ryder—John Travolta subbing for Robert ShawNs icy Mr. Blue—and becomes his negotiator and eventual cash mule into the tunnels of subterranean Manhattan.
The crackling give-and-take between Travolta, a hair-triggered, showboating Joker whose crimes evidently include swiping the mustache off the Village PeopleNs biker, and the smartly low-key Washington gives the new Pelham most of its juice. No other actor makes such an art of modulating his performances from situation to situation than Washington. You can read his characterNs standing in any situation by WashingtonNs gradations of subservience—whether in the presence of GarberNs immediate supervisor or Hizzoner himself (James Gandolfini, a spiky cocktail of BloombergNs financial savvy and GiulianiNs libido)—with his few moments of equal footing reserved for an interrogating officer (a quietly insinuating John Turturro).
On paper, Pelham would appear a good fit for the erratic Scott, whose style has morphed with time and technology into a kind of cubist barrage of image fragments. Synch him up with a techno thriller such as Enemy of the State or the recent DNjà Vu, and his ADD direction seems apt, exciting, a manifestation of electronic surveillance culture gone viral, infecting even the movieNs editing scheme. In DNjà Vu, he pulled off a car chase—occurring simultaneously in two different time periods—that maybe five other directors in the history of movies could have pulled off with such panache and lucidity, let alone helped to conceive.
But Scott applies that technique indiscriminately, feeding projects as diverse (in everything but lousiness) as Domino and Man On Fire into the same woodchipper. Here, ScottNs camera acrobatics have so little to do with the events theyNre recording they leave hiccups in the movieNs momentum. Swoosh! The camera goes flying this way past Denzel! Swoosh! The camera goes sailing the other way. Wheee! It orbits Gandolfini so vertiginously he might as well lean over and smooch Kim Novak. At his most frenetic and least disciplined, Scott doesnNt tell the story: He advertises it from shot to shot.
In the original Pelham, director Joseph SargentNs uncluttered direction played up the sweaty-collared confinement of the subway car and the transit office, locking the cops and crooks each in their own pressure cooker. Which marks, oh, the 50th time INve unfavorably compared the remake to the original—the lazy reviewerNs default setting, to be sure. But ScottNs redo comes up short in almost every regard against the N74 model—against David ShireNs knuckled-brass score, against its mugsN gallery of N70s New York character actors, against Peter StoneNs serrated script, and certainly against its wordless punch line, beside which the new versionNs gloppy coda looks sappy indeed. If itNs somehow unfair to compare the two, why was The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 even remade?
The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 was directed by Tony Scott; written by Brian Helgeland, based on the novel by John Godey; and stars Denzel Washington, John Travolta, James Gandolfini and John Turturro. Rated R. Countywide.
