Movie Review: The Taking of Pelham 123

Jim Erickson recommends this new thriller, even though it differs quite a bit from the original version.

At least five noncommercial movies over the next week, and I have reason to suspect that my list is incomplete. Tonight are two, The Muppet Movie and Outrage. Outrage is an extremely controversial documentary about public officials who are gay but work or at least speak against the gays; the issue is hypocrisy, not sex, but the outing of public figures who prefer to remain closeted is featured. Outrage shows at the Warren Theatre WEST, 9150 West 21st, tonight at 7:30, the Orpheum is showing the original The Muppet Movie. On Friday, the Orpheum is showing Easy Rider, that set the movie world on fire forty years ago, with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper crossing the continent on their motorcycle, surveying the counterculture world of 1969; take a trip to yesteryear at 7 p.m. Friday in the Orpheum. And there are two offerings at the Blank Page gallery, 917 West Douglas, Sunday and Tuesday. Sunday at 7 is the anime movie Wings of Honneguise, and 7:30 Tuesday is Papillon, with Dustin Hoffman and Steve McQueen escaping from Devil's Island.

And commercially, we have a first-rate thriller in The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3.

This remake differs from the 1974 original is ways typical of movies of now and 35 years ago. It's so much more violent and full of action as to qualify, almost, as an action thriller instead of a suspense thriller, with more killings on screen; more car crashes, and some spectacular ones; and a more active hero than Walter Mathau was permitted to be. Also, Denzel Washington has a background story so pointless that I can only assume it is there to suit the current insistence on soiled heroes, though the assumption of apparently everybody connected to the movie that his past sin has been proved is one of the few serious illogicalities in the movie. There are all manner of intrusions into what was originally a spare, businesslike story of men simply doing their jobs, what with an utterly irrelevant teenage love element via cell phone, and a lot of discussion of guilt and Catholicism and general public corruption that may reflect the more complex ways we have to look at things in a globalized world.

All this clutter, while it does reflect aspects of real experience, also reduces the suspense element and distracts us from the mystery of how John Travolta and his crew of nasties can hope to escape from a subway tunnel. And the cameraman could have been kept under better control: The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 does not need so many flash pans and blurry images and general camera acrobatics to remind us that we are in the presence of Art. And while we're on techniques, the car crashes are produced too much by editing, though the editing may spare us the usual tributes to reckless driving by limiting us to the crash moments alone.

But we still have a tense and puzzling situation, and the Travolta villain is a truly complex and frightening figure, reminding me of Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, but a lot more believable.

Generally, I think I prefer the more businesslike 1974 version, but it may have benefitted from my seeing it about twelve hours before the new one. I don't think you'd be bored if you saw them as a double feature, especially if you were interested in the way we saw things then and how we see them now.