Lacks suspense, but a worthy remake

The Taking of Pelham 123, Exeter Vue

Cert 15, 108 minutes

By Graham Taylor

This latest collaboration from director Tony Scott and Denzel Washington is The Taking of Pleham 123, a hostage thriller with a lack of stand out moments, but is cleverly construcuted, and will leave you begging for more.

Updated for the 21st century and a brand new audience, this 1974 remake of the same name follows Walter Garber (Washington) on what is seemingly a normal day, working as an MTA dispatcher. Of course, that would make for a very boring film, so the writers’ have spiced things up. Once a high flying assistant dispatcher, Garber’s career is in tatters as he investigated over an alleged incident involving a Japanese train corporation that left the MTA in vast finacial problems.

His luck continues to erode away, as the train line he has control of on this day (Pelham 123) is hijacked by a shady gang, led by the mysterious Mr Ryder (John Travolta, cranking the menace up to 11).

As Garber tries to deal with the situation, Ryder and his motley crew of slug moustached ‘terroists of New York’ make hefty demands, including a $10 million dollar ransom pay for the 19 hostages they have.

Whilst trying to build a relationship with the obviously physcotic Ryder, and finding a way to save the hostages, Garber and NYPD hostage negotiator (a very impressive John Tuturro) must somehow contact the Mayor of New York (James Gandolfini, as intense as ever) and plead for the money to be delievered to Ryder, before the 59 minute time limit he has set expires.

And they better hurry too, because one person will die for every minute over the time limit that the money doesn’t arrive. But can Garber outsmart Ryder with his vast knowledge of the tracks, and what skeletons lie in both their closets?

Pelham 123 is well paced adult thriller. However, I believe that the trailers may have hindered what has been a dismal box office result.

The banter between Garber and Ryder isn’t so present in the promos, which is a shame, as they have some great, pulseating conversations over the mic. Having said that, I do believe that Brian Hegeland and David Koepp, the two talented writers of the film’s screenplay, have disappointed. They seem to believe that the only way to convey the characters emotions is through the art of swearing. Whether it’s a tense action sequence or an emotionally crippling scene, both throw around a few flying f’s and m’s, which are highly unneccesary; particularly because there’s not a lot of blood and violence here, so this could have easily appealed to a bigger crowd, with a safer 12A rating.

Travolta’s manic performance as Ryder is in stark contrast to that of Washington’s, who moves away from his regular action films to play the awkward, shy ‘hero.’ It’s interesting to see the flaws of Garber, and really understand the character. You can never say these are one bit characters.

There are a lot of problems with Pelham 123 though, the main reason being that the whole film loses credibility by turning Garber into an all American action hero. It’s meant to be shown as a steady progression throughout, and although you realise it’s coming, you feel that the choice was uninspired, and would have been more interesting if a different reaction had occured, like if Garber had left the mic to go home, and how he dealed with his decision. That would have been far more interesting, and would finally have given Hollywood an original idea to work with, something they lack these days.

The music is very indecisive; it begins by playing hit rap tune, 99 Problems , and then moves onto an original score from Harry Gregson-Williams, which is far superior. His wonderful list of tracks evoke certain emotions depending on the scene, and play to Scott’s directing strenghts perfectly.

The infrequent car chase and gun shootouts are as loud and explosive as anything this year, but it all seems unintentional, as if Scott just decided to do it on the spot. There’s little point, and the film looks focus during these supposedly major scenes.

One thing that is obvious with the film is the lack of appreciative audience for the film. Yet to make back it’s hefty $100m budget, you have to feel for Columbia Pictures , who obviously believed that this could appeal to a very wide audience. Released in ultra wide locations in the US, it seems that the Americanised plot still couldn’t attract a major audience. The lack of appeal internationally has also hindered the performance of this film.

Adult films aren’t being that well represented these days, despite critical darlings such as the fantastic State of Play , the ambitious Duplicity and even the grandour of Public Enemies . If the standard of audience continues to fade away for these kind of movies, they’ll soon become non-exsistant in the film industry, which they don’t deserve, as films like this should be produced.

The direction by Scott is often to nauseating to swallow, and the stop start whirring in the opening credits is hard to stomach. #

Scott is a rather pretentious director, and seems to point blank refuse to make films that audiences want, which will lose him a lot of future jobs. His only major success, Top Gun , was released 25 years ago, which shows how unambitious his films have been in the last two decades.

However, this is enjoyable and certainly catches your attention for the majority of its two hour running time. It lacks the supense and cracking performances of the 1974 original, but it’s one of the better remakes of late, and will probably find an cult following on DVD. It’s just a shame that this is so mediocre.