Need a clear-cut example of just how movies have changed since the 1970s?
Step right up and buy a ticket to “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3,” the remake of the 1974 thriller.
The new film replaces craggy-faced Walter Matthau with the handsome Denzel Washington, but more importantly it brims with the sort of flashy camera work and hard-charging music that stand in sharp contrast to the meditative movie making of the ’70s.
“Pelham” also happens to be one of the better thrillers of the summer, but that’s faint praise considering recent letdowns like “Terminator Salvation” and “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.”
“Pelham” 2.0 finds Washington, looking heavier than we’ve ever seen him before, playing Walter Garber, an Everyman subway director who gets dragged into a nightmare scenario.
A charismatic killer named Ryder (John Travolta, sporting a neck tattoo and closely cropped hair) has commandeered a subway train and promises to kill a hostage a minute if he isn’t hand-delivered $10 million dollars and one cent in an hour.
Let the cat and mouse games begin.
The mental battle between Garber and Ryder is the main attraction here, and it’s good enough to make us forgive Hollywood for retooling a classic in the first place.
But the new “Pelham” remains a conflicted creation, a film which brings the requisite New Yawk flavor and character details, but can’t help itself from staging superfluous car crashes.
And while Washington’s character is portrayed as a flawed Average Joe, he eventually becomes your Standard Action Hero just when the screenplay runs out of inspiration.
The film has director Tony Scott’s fingerprints all over it, and that’s rarely a good thing. The “Domino” director can’t stage a single sequence without shaking the camera, monkeying with the film stock or drowning out the drama with overheated music.
Travolta follows Scott’s heavy-handed lead, shouting some of his lines and dropping F-bombs without conviction. The actor maintains such a reservoir of charisma that he still holds the screen with the uber-reliable Washington.
“The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3″ wants to be a gritty thriller and a blockbuster all at once. Only when the film splits the difference does it directly honor the source material.
(Photo: Denzel Washington plays an ordinary subway employee forced to deal with a hostage scenario in “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3.”)
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I'm an award-winning journalist and film critic with more than a decade of experience in newspapers, magazines and the Web. I'm a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association, the Washington, DC Area Film Critics Association and the Denver Film Critics Society.
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Strictly speaking, 3.0. There was a forgettable TV movie remake.
Two words: Shaky-camera, and I lose the desire to see a movie.
If I go to see a movie with action in it, I want to SEE the action. Action in a movie is a visual treat. I think it is a way for directors to compensate on skimpy stunt budgets.
I blame Michael Bay.
Good heads up on the TV remake, Charles.
And yeah, I don’t know who exactly is to blame, but why don’t directors try to keep the camera still for at least a few seconds?
I blame Saving Private Ryan, the first time i remember being subjected to the shaky cam. Unfotunately it didn’t bother me in Saving Private Ryan and if the past few years is an indicator it didn’t bother every single action movie director in the world. I seem to recall that Speilberg was given quite a bit of praise for his inovative camera work in the movie. It made you feel like you were there were a few of the reviews I read that describe this new and inventive camera technique. Now using shaky cam in an action scene is like a money shot in a porno, you can’t have a scene without either.
Unfortunately I don’t see this changing any time soon. It is part of the recipe for making an action movie these days. Just like Micheal Bey can’t make a movie without blowing up every set he has built for that movie, Hollywood can’t do action without the shaky cam. Now one of those two is fun to watch and the other gives me motion sickness.
Sounds like I can wait to see this one in DVD. Thanks for the review.
It’s not bad, Linda, although the ending is rather weak. But it’s certainly not a must-see.
What spoils some movies is they don’t use “ordinary” looking actors. Walter Matthau’s look was part of what made him believable in films.
Today rather than using actor’s like Matthau they attempt to ugly up a good looking actor instead. A fat suit, no makeup or maybe just a pair of glasses.
It sounds stupid but not using an ordinary looking person for a part takes me out of the movie.
That may be a factor in why The Hangover is doing such strong business, given the look of two of the three leads…
My 17 yr old just saw the remake of Pelham 123, one of my childhood favorites, last weekend. Tonight I asked him to watch the Matthau version with me. He says that the new version is, in his words, “absolutely lame” compared to the Matthau/Shaw version.
Was thinking about seeing this but will definantly give it a miss, sadly these days I need to google movies before going to see them to find out if they have a lot of that ’shaky cam’ in them. I am sick of wasting money on movies I am forced to walk out of half way through due to nausea. Maybe weak on my behalf but I know Im not alone.