Bad, bad John Travolta in The Taking of Pelham 123

When Stars Collide

Travolta rages, Washington plays it cool

Originally done in 1974 and remade as a TV movie a decade ago, this third iteration of The Taking of Pelham 123 is, unhappily, a combination of the first two versions: a big-budget star vehicle by a name director (Tony Scott) that has no more personality or originality than you’d expect from any generic made-for-television thriller.

Once again set in the bowels of the New York City subway system, Pelham wastes no time in establishing its brutal bona fides: a subway car is commandeered by a quartet of machine gun-toting thugs exuding sneers and menace in equal measure. The boss bad guy, Ryder (John Travolta, sporting tacky ’70s facial hair and an ugly tattoo), phones through to the dispatch centre and his call is picked up by Walter Garber (Denzel Washington), a paunchy, middle-aged guy who is about to get reluctantly dragged into a scary—and, all too soon, bloody—hostage taking.

Ryder demands $10,000,000 in ransom, and he wants it delivered to the stalled subway car in one hour—if the money is late, he will start shooting the passengers, one for every minute past the appointed time. Walter proves adept at establishing a rapport with the volatile maniac, but he is happy to hand the intercom over when the NYPD’s hostage negotiator (John Turturro) shows up. But, this being a movie, Ryder will only deal with Walter, which means that we get to watch two Hollywood stars have a supernova collision: Travolta goes into frequent rages and occasionally shoots people, while the charming and sexy Washington is the soothing voice of calm. (As battles go this isn’t much of a fair fight, because Washington is always classy and Travolta is at his overacting worst.)

While all this mano a mano huffing and puffing is going on, director Scott uses his standard arsenal of stutter-frame images, fast edits and other hyper-kinetic tricks to tart up what is nothing more than a routine heist-and-hostage storyline. There are a couple of subplots that help fill the two hours of running time, but they don’t add much. The most interesting one involves James Gandolfini (The Sopranos) as the scandal-ridden mayor, in a portrayal that very clearly combines the philandering of Giuliani and the extreme wealth and power of Bloomberg. Less effective is a young male hostage with a laptop who has maintained a Wi-Fi video link with his annoyingly needy girlfriend—the camera keeps returning to her watching a live feed from the subway car, but absolutely nothing comes of this. And when a large crew is whisking the money from the Federal Reserve to the appropriate subway entrance, the high-speed car and motorcycle cavalcade has more body-tossing and vehicle-flipping crashes than a whole season of Nascar.

Screenwriter Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential) has been at pains to keep the storyline current: aside from lots of post-9/11 references to “terrorists” there is also a connection to Wall Street malfeasance that would have made Bernie Madoff proud (although this late-breaking development is, to put it mildly, preposterous). Presumably, if one could find an audience that had seen very few movies, then this Pelham might get applauded. However, in our movie-saturated world, all the slick packaging, directorial tricks and star power can’t disguise how predictable and devoid of suspense this movie is. This is yet another case of Hollywood putting lipstick on a pig. M

--------------
The Taking of Pelham 123  ★★1/4
Directed by Tony Scott
Starring Denzel Washington and John Travolta
R - 106 minutes
Continues at the Odeon, SilverCity, Uni 4 and Caprice