Chattanooga Pulse

Director Tony Scott’s previous two films have both starred Denzel Washington and, to put it crassly, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 could be referred to as the third installment in Scott’s “Denzel Faced with Moral Uncertainty” trilogy.

In 2004’s Man on Fire, Washington played an alcoholic former CIA assassin hired to protect a prominent industrialist’s young daughter. Déjà Vu, released in 2006, had Denzel attempting to manipulate the space-time continuum and prevent needless deaths. In The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (in theaters now), a remake of a ’70s cult hit starring Walter Matthau, Washington plays Walter Garber, a portly civil service employee at the Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York City.

On this particular day, Garber finds himself dealing with a man who calls himself Ryder—an armed criminal who has blocked a transit tunnel by stopping a subway car inside.  Over the radio, he communicates to Garber his philosophy of “people as commodities” and explains if he doesn’t get $10,000,000 delivered to him on the hour, the hostage commodities in the train car will start disappearing and innocent lives will be lost.

Garber firmly stands his ground until the government hostage-negotiation crew (led by a one-note John Turturro) rushes in and takes over the conversation with Ryder.  Garber is asked to leave, but when Ryder finds out that his favorite civil employee is gone, he is infuriated and kills the driver of the hijacked subway car.  Garber is forced to return and continue the conversation with a criminal who is reaching higher levels of insanity by the minute.

Walter Garber is an affable fellow, liked by his co-workers but not his superiors.  His current job as a traffic controller is the result of a demotion when he was suspected of taking a bribe while in Japan looking at new subway cars for the city transit system.  Garber denies that he ever took the bribe, but Ryder uses this piece of information to his advantage, forcing Garber to confess to the bribe.  Walter continues to deny taking the bribe until Ryder points a gun at a young hostage and demands the truth.

Through his confession—an act of bravery that transpires in front of all his superiors, plus numerous government agents—Walter comes to grips with the truth about himself and his own actions while simultaneously preventing the needless death of an innocent person.  It’s a profound trade-off, and one that figures in to the film’s thrilling conclusion when Ryder and Garber come face-to-face.

Working from a nimble screenplay by Man on Fire scribe Brian Helgeland, Tony Scott’s directorial work is so-so at best.  His approach to “Pelham” consists of two overused techniques: the fast dolly to the left and jerky slow motion. He just can’t get enough of either one and, although the story is fully understood, the modus operandi seems more fitted to a made-for-television potboiler than a big-screen spectacle.  Although the stakes are high, lives are on the line, and heroes are on the move, “Pelham” is as generic as a filler episode of Fox’s 24—at least until it reaches a thrilling final act.

Though his demands and philosophy are sobering, Ryder, including guns and looming henchmen whose vocabulary skill peaks at “Shit!  What the fuck!”, is less than terrifying.  The script gives him plenty of threatening ultimatums to howl at Garber, but it’s easy to tell that Travolta isn’t comfortable in his aging skin.  Heck, he seemed even more comfortable debasing himself in the skin of Edna Turnblad in 2007’s Hairspray—a career low one would hope he never reaches again.  Here he sports a goatee in lieu of a fat suit, but the added facial hair doesn’t take away 20 years and transform him back into the lithe, charismatic movie star of yesteryear.

Despite Travolta’s meandering villain, the film’s screenplay hits the right notes when it focuses on Garber, an exceptionally empathetic character thrown without warning into a refining crucible, out of which he emerges a better man.  Although the villain stays boring, the movie clips along briskly and the final third hurtles to a sobering, redemptive conclusion void of any high-minded pedantic mumbo-jumbo or sermonizing.  We’re simply left with a likable Everyman transformed, at least for a moment, into a hero—a rarity we probably won’t see again this summer.

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
Directed by Tony Scott
Starring Denzel Washington, John Travolta
Rated R
Running time: 106 minutes