Film review: The Taking of Pelham 123

Published on Thursday 30 July 2009 19:12

THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123 (15) ** DIRECTED BY: TONY SCOTT STARRING: DENZEL WASHINGTON, JOHN TRAVOLTA, JOHN TURTURRO, LUIS GUZMAN, JAMES GANDOLFINI

THERE'S a moment in Tony Scott's wilfully dumb update of the cult 1974 thriller The Taking of Pelham 123 that sums up everything that's wrong with modern Hollywood. It revolves around one of the hostages on the New York subway train that John Travolta's crazy-as-a-loon bad guy has hijacked as part of his nefarious plan to get revenge on the city. Said hostage is a surly teenager who first appears sitting on the titular train tapping away on his laptop, video-chatting to his girlfriend via what must surely be the world's best mobile wi-fi provider.

If you've ever tried to get a continuous broadband service on an overground train, let alone the Tube, feel free to start guffawing loudly. This isn't the moment, though. Nor is the point when this kid slides his webcam-equipped laptop under a seat amid the chaos of the hijacking, an act that not only enables him to continue chatting to his irritating girlfriend with zero interference, but eventually provides the network news channels with a live, glitch-free feed of the crisis after his girlfriend streams it on her blog – something that ends up having no bearing on the rest of the film.

No, the moment in question arrives shortly after the authorities dealing with the situation at the transit system's headquarters (among them Denzel Washington's train dispatcher and John Turturro's hostage negotiator) realise this webcast exists. Obviously anticipating audience scepticism, a voice wonders if you should even be able to get reception in the subway. "No, you shouldn't," comes the reply, and… erm…that's it. That's how screenwriter Brian Helgeland – who won an Oscar for LA Confidential – chooses to write himself out of the corner this idiotic detail has backed him and the film into. Communications companies aren't road-testing a new underground consumer internet network; the government hasn't boosted wi-fi signals on the subway as part of some anti-terrorism initiative – of all the things he could have gone for, Helgeland (and Scott) went for the least imaginative: the kid just happens to be able to get a perfect broadband service 50ft below street level. Yes, really.

Of course, it's unwise to expect plausibility in a Tony Scott film. His last movie was the dementedly entertaining Dj Vu, which featured a trash-and-crash car chase that simultaneously took place in two different time dimensions within the same shot. Here, though, the fact that A-list film-makers such as Scott and Helgeland can't even be bothered to come up with a dumb movie explanation to justify the moronic nature of their work feels symptomatic of the contempt Hollywood increasingly has for its audience.

Then again, coming up with any justification for remaking The Taking of Pelham 123 is a struggle. The original may not rank alongside the classics of 1970s film-making (it was heavily influenced by The French Connection, but nowhere near as modern or as innovative), but it was a superlative genre picture with a great, grizzled cast (Walter Matthau as the shuffling transit cop, Robert Shaw as the heist's stone-cold criminal mastermind) and an enduring, hipster legacy (Quentin Tarantino paid tribute to the film's colour-coded crooks in Reservoir Dogs and the Beastie Boys name-checked it on their Ill Communication album). What's more, it captured something of the rotten-to-the-core nature of the Big Apple in the early 1970s, something the new film tries and fails to update by refashioning the story for a post-9/11, post-credit crunch New York. Travolta's bad guy, Ryder, for instance, has a gripe against Wall Street, the struggling-in-the-polls mayor (played by James Gandolfini) makes repeated references to the crisis-handling skills of Rudy Giuliani, and the only hostage defined enough to have a hero moment is an ex-serviceman.

None of this builds to anything, though. Scott and Helgeland front-load the first half of the movie with details that suggest Ryder might have some kind of genuine grievance, as he and his goons demand $10 million within the hour (after which, they'll start shooting hostages). Yet any notion that they're about to serve up some kind of crude moral quandary for us to chew is quickly derailed by Scott's fondness for hyperactive editing, explosion-heavy car chases (the fact that it's set on a train doesn't prevent him from including lots of elaborate traffic-trashing action) and a Die Hard-style twist he doesn't have the panache to pull off.

Even worse, there's not even much fun to be had watching Travolta go toe to toe with Denzel Washington, whose dispatcher Walter Garber (a former executive newly demoted amid a bribery scandal) turns out to be one of those fundamentally decent guys whose past indiscretions are really just there to aid his redemption, as he comes good under pressure and rises from being "just a guy on the other end of the mic" to a fully-fledged, gun-wielding hero, able to shoot a man in cold blood one minute and crack jokes the next. Neither man does anything that could technically be described as acting. Travolta – all crazy eyes and Village People facial hair – riffs on the Nicolas Cage impression he did in Face/Off, while Washington regurgitates virtually every blockbuster character he's ever played. They're phoned-in performances. Or, in keeping with the film, webcast from a secure location deep underground, far away from reality.