Film Review: 'Pelham' takes us nowhere

According to reports, the cast and crew of "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3," a thriller about a hijacked subway car, were required to attend New York Transportation Authority safety classes before production started, because much of the shooting was to take place on location, on active train tracks.

But why bother with such realism when a couple of minutes into your movie you're going to reveal that your bad guy is John Travolta, looking "street" in a wool cap, a leather jacket, a pistol neck tattoo, a diamond ear stud and a Village People mustache, plus sideburns? "I got 99 problems but a bitch ain't one," Jay-Z declaims on the soundtrack as the grim-faced Travolta enters the frame -- an accurate if not particularly pertinent sentiment for this tale of a broker turned jailbird turned criminal mastermind who demands $10 million in cash in exchange for a carload of terrified hostage commuters.

Photos by Stephen Vaughn/Columbia Pictures

Denzel Washington (top) and John Travolta are featured in director Tony Scott's "The Taking of Pelham 123."

As the rap lyric suggests, women hardly figure into the story, although the wife of the Denzel Washington character does make her husband promise to bring home a quart of milk after the crisis is resolved, apparently so the obligation will remind him not to let himself be shot or blown up. Wife aside,

Travolta's genius/psychopath, called Ryder, and Washington's morally compromised subway dispatcher, Walter Garber, are presented as mirror images of each other (a theme reinforced in the film's advertising art), with complementary facial hair and jeweled studs in opposite ears. To make sure moviegoers don't miss this connection, the script, credited to Brian Helgeland, makes it explicit: "You're just like me, Garber," taunts Ryder, after he learns the civil servant on the radio who has become his contact with the outside world has been accused of taking bribes. (The two stars don't meet onscreen until the final scene.)

A remake of director Joseph Sargent's highly regarded 1974 film, which was inspired by the previous year's John Godey novel, the new "Pelham" was captained by British director Tony Scott, who -- true to his origins in television commercials -- always seems to be selling us something we're not sure we want and that we can't believe he wants.

Here, as in his 14 previous features (a roll call that includes such hits and misses as "Top Gun," "True Romance" and the insane Keira Knightley bounty hunter quasi-biopic, "Domino"), Scott directs as if in thrall to style and fashion. In a trick borrowed from Wong Kar-wai, movement is frequently presented as a stuttery slow-motion blur, like the drawings that suggest speed in a Flash comic book. The gratuitous car-crash sequences are scored with frantic electric guitar, to sell us the idea that what we're watching is exciting. Does Scott really think such action plays better when accompanied by blaring rock music; is that really the type of movie scene he wants to see? Or does he think this is what it takes to hook audiences into becoming loyal consumers of the Tony Scott brand?

Short of hair but large of belly, Washingon -- in his fourth collaboration with Scott -- is fine, as always, as a sort of crafty Everyman, a professional who -- lucky for New York -- just happens to be on the clock when the apparent madman begins his ransom-demand countdown. Travolta, meanwhile, chews the scenery like a rodent in a "rathole" (Ryder's epithet for New York) until the laughable climax, which is punctuated with a military-style salute from a police hostage negotiator played by John Turturro, a gesture so silly it causes one to wonder whether "Pelham" is supposed to be a dry-as-sand comedy -- a "Beat the Devil" for the "Transformers" era.

-- John Beifuss, 529-2394

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