The Taking of Pelham 123

Plot synopsis:
A man calling himself Ryder hijacks Pelham 123, a New York City Subway 6 train that departed from Pelham Bay Park station at 1:23 p.m. Ryder is accompanied by three other heavily armed men: Bashkim, Emri and former train operator Phil Ramos. They uncouple the front car from the rest of the train and take the passengers hostage. MTA employee Walter Garber is working the Rail Control Center as a train dispatcher and receives a ransom call from Ryder, who demands $10 million in cash be paid within 60 minutes. Ryder warns that every minute past the deadline they force him to wait, he will execute a hostage.
Bashkim kills a plainclothes Transit Police officer who approaches him after recognizing that something is amiss. He and Ramos then allow all the passengers not in the front car to be released except for the motorman. Garber reluctantly negotiates with Ryder and develops a rapport, while Ramos and Emri set up Internet access in the tunnel. Ryder uses his laptop to watch the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunge nearly 1,000 points during the next hour in response to the hostage-taking. One of the passenger's laptops also connects to the Internet, and the computer's webcam is activated. The webcam allows the people in the control center to observe Ryder and Ramos. Lieutenant Camonetti of the NYPD Emergency Service Unit enters the RCC to take over negotiations and Garber is ordered to leave the premises. The change infuriates Ryder, who shoots and kills the train's motorman in order to force Camonetti to bring Garber back. Garber blames Camonetti for the motorman's death.
Camonetti learns that Garber is being investigated for allegedly accepting a $35,000 bribe over a contract for new subway cars. Ryder also discovers the allegations through online news reports after Ramos told Ryder that Garber was a "big-shot" at the MTA and should not be dispatching trains and forces Garber to confess by threatening to kill a passenger. Garber explains that he was offered the bribe while deciding between two companies for a train contract, but also tells Ryder that he used the money to pay for his child's college tuition and insists that he would have made the same decision without the financial offer. Ryder expresses his admiration for Garber's willingness to risk himself to save a stranger. Meanwhile, the Mayor agrees to deliver the ransom money to Ryder and orders the NYPD to deliver it. On the way to the delivery point, the police are involved in an accident and fail to get the money there in time. Garber attempts to bluff Ryder by telling him the money has been dropped off, unaware that Ryder has been monitoring events on his laptop and knows he's being lied to. An enraged Ryder threatens to execute one of the children hostages and the child's mother. Another hostage, a former soldier, sacrifices himself to save the mother and child and is killed. A short gunfight erupts after an NYPD ESU sniper is bitten by a rat and accidentally discharges his weapon, killing Ramos.
Based on clues that Garber receives during his conversations with Ryder, the NYPD discover that Ryder's real name is Dennis Ford. He was a manager at a private equity firm before being sentenced to prison for investment fraud. Ford had agreed to a plea bargain for a three-year sentence, but was instead sentenced to ten years by the judge. One of the Mayor's aides mentions the extreme drop in the major stock indexes in response to the train hijacking, and the Mayor deduces that Ryder is actually attempting to manipulate the market via put options. Ryder demands that Garber himself deliver the ransom money, and Garber is given a pistol and flown to the terminal to make the drop. Ryder brings Garber aboard and orders him to operate the train to the next station, where he and the hijackers exit the train during a brief stop. Ryder then uses a device to rig the train to go on without them. Garber manages to separate himself from Ryder at a railway crossing and then follows him as he escapes to the Waldorf Astoria hotel. Ryder parts from Bashkim and Emri, who are later shot dead after being surrounded by police and provoking the NYPD to use deadly force on the two in an apparent suicide-by-cop.
The train comes to a halt safely, and police learn that Ryder is no longer on board. Ryder hails a taxi while Garber follows him in a truck. Ryder checks his laptop and finds that his scheme has amassed a $307 million profit. He leaves the cab on the Manhattan Bridge and takes the bridge's pedestrian walkway but Garber catches up to him. Garber holds Ryder at gunpoint, and Ryder gives him a 10-second ultimatum to pull the trigger. In the final seconds of the countdown, Ryder pulls out his gun and forces Garber to shoot him. As he lies dying, Ryder tells Garber that he considers him a hero. Afterward, the mayor thanks Garber for saving the hostages and reassures him about his bribery charges. The film concludes with Garber walking into his home carrying a bag of groceries, including a half-gallon of milk he promised his wife, Theresa, he'd bring home earlier in the film.

Tags: violence, boring, murder

Review:
Hearing the names Washington, Travolta, and Scott creates a lot of anticipation, but unfortunately what wants to be a slick combination of suspense thriller and character study instead results in a ponderous film with a weak setup, predictable plot twists, shallow characters, and little tension.
It's easy to watch with actors of Washington and Travolta's caliber at work, but Scott's direction is pretentious and throws out some obligatory action scenes that seem to exist for the sole purpose of padding the time on the way to an expected climax.
It passed the time, had some thrills, but that was about it for me.The '09 version is entertaining, with some excellent action scenes and more than a few decent dialog exchanges between characters, but it is nothing more than a Tony Scott action movie dressed up as "The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3".
While starting off liking Washington's character (now disgraced MTA administrator-turned dispatcher Walter Garber, as opposed to Detective Zachary Garber in the book and original screen incarnation), I found, as the movie progressed, that he went from believable to just another two-dimensional action movie hero who, if he was what as he really started out as being, would not have ended up doing what he did in the film.
A great director in Tony Scott, screenwriter in Brian Helgeland (Man on Fire, LA Confidential), and leading men in Denzel Washington and John Travolta each doing what they do best.
As for the rest of the cast, James Gandolfini, playing a New York Mayor, is good comic relief, getting jokes about Giuliani, subways, and the Yankees but Turturro and Luis Guzman, playing a disgruntled MTA employee working with Ryder, don't get much to do."Pelham" works pretty well as a thriller because the Tony Scott-Denzel Washington teaming (this is their fourth go-around) always seems to do so and adding Travolta, always fun as a villain, is another nice touch.
On his shift, naturally, a 1:23 train out of Pelham (New York City) suddenly stops in the middle of its run, and a hijacker demands $10 million to be delivered in exactly one hour, or passengers start dying unnaturally.What makes this a little more than your typical cat-and-mouse game is the undercurrent of what's gotten Washington character into hot water, as well as Travolta's character's actual motives.
Walter Garber not only isn't a "seize the day" kind of person, he shies away from confrontations he knows he can't win.Also worth noting are John Turturro (as a hostage negotiator displaced by Washington, since Travolta won't talk to anyone else) and James Gandolfini (as Hizzoner, finally playing a mayor who's not a complete nitwit).
I don't know what it is with modern-day remakes of classic 60's and 70's films but it seems to me that directors throw almost all the good stuff out and bring in instead eye-hurting jerky-flashy camera-work, an ear-poundingly loud soundtrack which is constantly in the background and even-louder talking characters who swear and commit random acts of mindless violence whenever it suits them.So the Pelham 123 subway train in New York gets hijacked by disgruntled psychopathic Wall Street trader John Travolta as part of a devious plot to make a killing on the stock- exchange and revenge himself on the city for turfing him out of his high-paid job years before.
The premise is hardly new territory, and, for those who have seen the Walter-Matthau-Robert-Shaw version of the John Godey novel, the film is even less original.However, for audiences that want a night out at the movies with a rousing action flick, "The Taking of Pelham 123" will fill the bill nicely.
This style soon becomes sickening and you wish for a moment a shot would simply hold for more than 3 seconds without constant self-conscious cinematic gimmicks.This arranged marriage of production effects even made me laugh out loud when during a helicopter shot of the New York skyline, the sun disappears behind some sky scrappers and each time it does you get a "whoosh" sound followed by a train "beeep"!Soon after this nauseous beginning, a simple edit of Denzel Washington sitting at his desk is badly botched when a mid-shot cuts to a close-up and he is looking and sitting in a completely different position!
Where Joseph Sargent's direction was subtle, Scott opts to shove everything down your throat; where Peter Stone's screenplay from 25 years ago was clever, Brian Helgeland tries too hard to make it hip and cool; and where Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw proved an unlikely but memorable pairing as good guy / bad guy, Washington and Travolta share next to no chemistry.
Every chance possible our ears are assaulted with unnecessary sounds which are poorly matched to what we see on screen (at one point a helicopter sounds like an F1 car.) Occasionally a film calls for coarse language – some movies can even use excessive language to great effect (Reservoir Dogs or Boondock Saints for example) – however almost every time the F-bomb is dropped in Brian Helgeland's script, and it happens a hell of a lot, it is simply not required.
I suppose if there was one filmmaker who could take a delicious cat-and-mouse thriller - that was made into a superb 1974 film starring Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, Jerry Stiller and Martin Balsam - and turn it into a cacophonous mess, it would be Tony Scott.Scott has replaced the wit, nuance and subtlety in the original film with yelling, bombast, some pointless action and noise.After the screeching title credits, I actually thought Scott's remake showed promise when it settled into telling the story of the hijacking of Pelham 123.
In the case of the remake of the train hijack/ransom heist thriller "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3," the mill has been running so much that maybe the more adequate phrase should be the past tense "ran." Tony Scott's "Pelham" does give us those vital and homey conventions of the "mad man takes hostages and demands millions" movie, but the story is so straightforward and the film as a whole never seems to take itself seriously enough to completely hook its audience and pull them into the situation.First there's John Travolta, rocking some creepy facial hair, senseless tattoos and shouting swear words at authorities like it's the third grade and his buddy just taught them to him.
A New York subway train is hijacked and the bad guys are demanding $10-million.This is a remake of the same title back in the 1970s and the original had more suspense, tension, better dialogue and we cared.
True, it is fact that remakes can never be better or equal to their original counterpart (The Day The Earth Stood Still and The Wicker Man are good examples) but this one was entertaining, although it sometimes has that bloated, Hollywood feel that is so prevalent in movies and totally unnecessary because story and acting alone should be more important.
To be fair, I was thrilled at some points in the film( I won't give anything away) but since I saw the original many years ago, I can say that this is a good summer heist flick that while not as gripping as the original Taking of Pelham 123, more than makes up for it in the entertainment value which I cannot say for most remakes (although some have come close) but with two strong leads, I would like to see both Washington and Travolta in future films that are not remakes but entirely fresh roles altogether..
The pratfalls are just a lot more noticeable if the original film was a classic or extremely well regarded.Such are the complications that faced director Tony Scott (MAN ON FIRE; TOP GUN) and screenwriter Brian Helgeland as they took on their remake of THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1-2-3, which had already made for an incredibly suspenseful film back in 1974 under the hands of experienced journeyman director Joseph Sargent.
With audience attention spans shrunk considerably in the ensuing thirty-five years, not to mention the expectations of car crashes and explosions, Scott and Helgeland not surprisingly fall somewhat short by substituting subtlety for sound and fury; headache-inducing freeze frame and montage gimmickry; rap and heavy metal on the soundtrack; and far more crude language and bloodshed than is really necessary.Still, there have been remakes that have been far worse than this one; and at least, Scott had the good sense of placing Denzel Washington in the role essayed by Walter Matthau in the original; here, he is a transit official with a slightly shady past (and whereas he was named Zachary Garber in the original, as a favor to the great actor who played Garber in '74, in 2009 he's named Walter Garber).
Veteran actors John Turturro (as a hostage negotiator) and James Gandolfini (as the NYC mayor) also do good supporting turns, trying to help Washington's cool, calm, collected transit official.Where I felt the film went slightly askew, however, was in a decision typical of many Hollywood directors these days with respect to actors who play villains: allowing them to go so far overboard early on that there's more ham in their performances than there is in any Hormel factory.
And this is what Scott does with John Travolta; he allows the actor to play the lead hijacker John Ryder with far too much zeal and insanity to be anything other than a typical Hollywood nut job, this in total contrast to Robert Shaw in the original film, where the late, great British actor portrayed Ryder with a certain low-key viciousness and a clipped delivery.
Presumably Sargent is doing a life stretch in the funhouse without parole thanks to Jaws, so Tony Scott stepped in for this remake that is in danger of a Red Bull induced heart attack.Travolta (dressed as one of the village people) and Washington star as the crook and subway controller who come to rely on each when a subway train is hijacked beneath New York City.
This is a good movie plenty of twists and turns with heart-stopping excitement , it's an outstanding take on of the 1974 film of the same title in which various hijackers (Travolta, Luis Guzman, Gojcaj) , kidnap a N.Y.C. subway train and hold the city to ransom .
This edge-of-your-seat motion picture is professionally directed by Tony Scott in his usual desperate style that retains a peculiar fascination .Other films dealing with this thrilling story are the following : 1974 classic version by Joseph Sargent with Robert Shaw (Travolta role), Walter Matthaw (Washington character) as a cynical, grumbling , gum-chewing Transit Authority adding his comic and ironic qualities , along with Martin Balsam and Jerry Stiller .
This movie finally made up my mind about something that has been bothering me for some time...would I rather watch a movie with big names or a movie with some unknown actors in the lead roles...and it comes down to 'whether they lost the darn script or not'...This one really pushes my last nerve though...Not only did the apparently lose the script, but these guys are obviously so sure of themselves that they feel they can move on ahead an just 'fake it'...because surely with the promos, people will buy tickets and they'll get paid anyway...this is without question a joke of a movie...without any jokes...The beginning teases you that this is gonna' be an involved, crime mystery, action flick...that less than midway...becomes obvious it's a 'running through the paces, 2nd rate script (if they had one at all)...That's nothing more than a predictable and EXTREMELY BORING MOVIE...NOT NEARLY WORTH THE FILM...and could easily have been done on a hand-held camcorder with the same results and BORING OUTCOME...NO WONDER IT FOUND ITSELF AT THE REDBOX ONLY WEEKS AFTER THEATRICAL RELEASE...THESE GUYS JUST DROPPED SEVERAL LEVELS DOWN ON MY ' MUST SEE METER'...Complete and utter junk for a film...not impressed...Uhhh, disappointed says it better....
As a dog who urinates the tree which is in front of its home, director Tony Scott marks the remake of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 with his frenetic style, which does not only produce epilepsy in this case, but which also erases all the positive elements from the original film, which is not particularly famous, but is, by my point of view, an excellent thriller with solid performances and a realistic urban "taste".The remake, on the contrary, could not have been more artificial and forced because of its hollow screenplay, irritating edition tricks and an over-the-top drama which replaces the genuine suspense from the original film.On its most basic shape, the screenplay from this film is reduced to an extensive phone conversation between a worker and a kidnapper (the two main characters).Ideally, the force of the characters and the fight of intellects should have been enough for keeping the spectator's interest.But the screenplay is so poor that it is far from getting it, not to mention it also has a lot of peripheral elements which are designed for expanding the story and showing twists.However, none of those things work, because they all feel as irrelevant filler.The screenplay was so weak that I did not care about what was happening.One of the very few things I liked on this film is Denzel Washington's competent performance; I would have liked to see it on a much better movie.John Travolta is horribly exaggerated on his role; he never feels natural at all.As I said before, Scott's edition tricks on this movie are irritating.That technique of film-making reminds me of the comedians who make a lot of fuss, shout and say rudeness while telling a bad joke; some people laugh because of the spectacle; and other ones impatiently wait the conclusion to see if the joke deserves an applause.In movies like this, there are some people who enjoy the visual spectacle, and other people who get tired of so many tricks and hope them to have a point.Well, I belong to the second group of people.As an excellent alternative to this horrible action film, I can recommend the TV mini-series The Kill Point; it also shows the struggle of freeing hostages during an assault (but in a bank instead of a subway), but the intelligent characters development, the solid screenplay and the motivation from the robbers show authentic ingenuity, instead of the absolutely hollow and ridiculous delirium The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 makes us feel with its arbitrary shootouts and tedious chases.This movie is the fourth collaboration between Scott and Washington and it is clearly the worst one, something which explains the magnitude of the problem when one of those collaborations was the tedious Man on Fire.Instead of watching this insipid and terribly boring remake, I suggest you to watch the original film, which is exciting and hugely entertaining..
I'm sure this wasn't what Washington had in mind when he went to work that day.Washington's in a bad situation, the Transit Authority has no confidence in him because of charges pending, but Transit Cop John Turturro has to deal with him, play the hand Travolta is dealing so to speak.The biggest difference between this and the original Pelham was in the hijacker's character.
In The Taking of Pelham 123 we have one man (Denzel Washington) sitting at the control desk of a section of the New York underground negotiating with another man (John Travolta) who has hijacked one of the subway trains, uncoupled one carriage, and is holding its occupants ransom for $10 million in a tunnel underground.
But an extremely good portrayal and enjoyable performance by John travolta, definitely one of the highlights of the movie.Denzel Washington, not much needs to be said about this mans acting ability, he plays a slightly overweight older character, who is fairly insignificant, he's not an ex-cop or any sort of hero, but is an everyday citizen, that gets dragged into this situation, and becomes an everyday hero, once again he is likable and thorough in his performance, also an extreme joy to watch on the big screen.The chemistry between the two actors is top quality, and the script and direction by tony Scott once again flawless in its thoroughly and conviction.
The trailer for this remake looked pretty awesome, with Denzel Washington and John Travolta starring and Tony Scott directing.
In this remake of The Taking of Pelham 123, Denzel Washington re- teams with Scott for the fourth time as a MTA dispatcher who is thrust into a hostage negotiation situation as John Travolta has high jacked a New York City subway train and demands $10 Million in one hour.
The original had Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw as hero and villain respectively, while this remake sees Scott regular Denzel Washington and bad-guy-for-hire John Travolta stepping into those lofty shoes.
to my surprise this remake was actually a pretty good film.it's Directed by Tony Scott,so i had reservations going in,but overall this movie works.John Travolta(as the villain)and Denzel Washington(as the hero)play well off each other.there's plenty of intense drama,good dialogue and eventually some good action sequences.the acting is very good here from both Travolta and Washington,and the supporting cast.this one has a more expanded story than the original.you get to know the two main characters a bit.the movie is probably fairly realistic in its portrayal of how the the characters would react in that kind of situation.anyway,i was very entertained by the whole thing.for me,The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is an 8/10.