It’s quite possible you might be taken by Pelham 123

The Taking of Pelham 123 is an action-crime movie about a crazed lunatic who hi-jacks a subway train in order to make a financial gain from an economic downturn. To believe that people go to great lengths during desperate times is not hard to ask. It is the means by which the villain in this film barters with a down-trodden New York economy that stretches the imagination.
John Travolta stars as the mastermind responsible for taking over a New York city subway car one afternoon in order to hold the passengers aboard hostage for a hefty ransom. The film never quite answers whether his axe to grind is a political or personal one, though the plot hints at both. I’m not sure that it matters anyways because director Tony Scott is putting his money on the fact that audiences won’t be asking such questions, or much less care by the time the first hostage is threatened to be offed.

The film co-stars Denzel Washington who plays Walter Garber, an ordinary city subway dispatcher whose day is thrown into disarray by a man calling himself Ryder (Travolta). Ryder’s demands are simple enough for a plot such as this: Get the mayor to deliver him $ 10,000,000 in one hour or hostages will be killed for every minute past. Garber must use his vast knowledge of the underground subway system to devise a plan to negotiate with the lunatic and remove the hostages safely.

The film tries to be much more of a visceral experience then a mental one. With frenetic directing, fast-paced cutting, and a pulsating soundtrack, Tony Scott’s trick is to get you to sweat without paying too much attention to the plot. For the most part, the trick works. The tension is indeed raised but unfortunately not nearly as much by performances, which is what a movie like this needs. Travolta seems to be behaving more like a bad-guy than rooting his performance in real character. The script demands him to swear so he does it. He is asked to wave his gun in the face of helpless pedestrians, so he complies.

The film works better on the city-side of the story. John Turturro gives a fine supporting performance as chief negotiator for the NYPD. Denzel Washington’s character although somewhat familiar by now, is genuinely intriguing. He seems to be the classic wrong man, caught in a situation that he has little or no control over.
The best indicator of how much I enjoyed this movie is probably the fact that at times my hands were gripping the chair. Yes those minutes were few and far between, and yes the action is mostly preposterous, but Pelham 123 has its moments.

3/5