Christian Toto looks back at the original and despite two remakes (one for cable, one for the big screen) definitive Taking of Pelham One Two Three from 1974:
Last summer’s pedestrian “Pelham” remake illustrates just where today’s films too often go astray. While John Travolta burned hundreds of calories as the hyperventilating villain, Shaw rarely raises his voice.
Guess which screen baddie leaves more of an impression?
The plot in both films remains a model of efficiency, but the remake’s final 20 minutes becomes a silly, belabored affair.
The original never suffers such a letdown.
“Pelham” knows how New Yorkers talk — and talk — and how they can’t help expressing themselves even in dire circumstances. The accents are all dead on, from Matthau talking about the “terlet” to his colleagues not willing to give those SOBs who stole their train an inch.
“The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” is all New York, its coal black humor, blunt honesty and ability to rally in times of crisis.
They don’t make ‘em like “Pelham” anymore, even when they break the bank trying.
And the opening and closing music by David Shire are probably the only pieces of 12-tone serial composing with a monster groove:
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I’m not sure that’s quite completely strict serialism — I think it’s cheating to use that three-note base line — but pretty durn close. I always thought it was better suited to jazz.
I watched it recently, the original I mean, and enjoyed it a great deal. The one thing that struck me was how politically incorrect the humor was. Matthau spends half the early part of the movie insulting these Japanese guys who are observing his operation, making all sorts of racist quips to his colleagues in the assumption (erroneous it turns out) that they don’t speak English, and then at the end of the pic, when the narc who was on the train gets wounded and is lying facedown, with long hair, Matthau calls him “Miss” thinking he’s female, because of the hair. It’s just amusing.
Shaw is, as you say, excellent. Travolta these days seems to be shooting (in movies like this anyway) to be a younger version of Nicholson in one or the other of his movies. Neither seems worried that they’ll be seen overacting in one of these roles. The flamboyant charismatic bad guy in movies is probably a pretty reliable stereotype, but in the modern era (to my mind anyway) it started with Alan Rickman in Die Hard. He was more quiet and reserved than most of the rest, but the music, the lines they gave him, the character, were all flamboyant, and made up for what was really an understated performance. Since it made Rickman’s career (or helped it considerably, anyway) every actor since has wanted a similar role.
Having seen “Pelham” in New York when it first came out, and coming at the end of the horrific eight-year reign of John V. Lindsey as mayor, the audience reaction to the crowd’s booing when the mayor arrives on the scene got the biggest laugh of the movie. Don’t know if audiences elsewhere got the joke, but if they did, they probably didn’t enjoy it as much.