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DVD Tuesday: Subway Nightmares — The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three DVD art courtesy MGM Home Video
So, Denzel Washington is starring in a remake of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) for director Tony Scott, with a new screenplay by David Koepp. Now, Washington and Koepp are very talented and Scott can get a movie made, but among movies in no need of remaking, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three ranks high on the list. So this week's DVD Tuesday is dedicated to the original, in all its grimy glory.
How do you steal a New York City subway train? Former movie publicist Morton Freedgood figured out a way, and his 1973 novel, written under the pseudonym "John Godey," was snapped up before publication and immediately put into production under director Joseph Sargent and screenwriter Peter Stone. Needless to say, city officials and representatives of the Metropolitan Transit Authority weren't wild about the story of four identically dressed hijackers, hiding behind color-coded nicknames (what's betting this is where Quentin Tarantino, connoisseur of all things down and dirty, got the idea for Reservoir Dogs?), separating the first car of a Manhattan-bound number 6 train (yes, the line Jennifer Lopez immortalized with her album On the 6) from the rest and holding the conductor and 17 passengers hostage for $1 million. If the City of New York — which, bear in mind, was in such severe fiscal distress in the early 1970s that it was bankrupt by 1975 — doesn't deliver the money in exactly one hour, they'll begin executing hostages. One hostage every minute until the money arrives.
Transit Authority Police Lieutenant Zachary Garber (Walter Matthau), who's busy making an ass of himself in front of a group of executives from the Tokyo Metropolitan Subway System taking an official tour of New York's internationally acclaimed public transportation network, winds up being the official liaison between the hijackers — Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw), Mr. Green (Martin Balsam), Mr. Grey (Hector Elizondo) and Mr. Brown (Earl Hindman) — and everyone else, including the mayor, the NYPD (the transit police and the aboveground police were two different forces then, under the same ultimate command but functioning independently) and his own bosses, including the controller (character actor Dick O'Neill), who sputters "Screw the passengers! What do they expect for 35 cents — to live forever?" Uh-huh, back then it cost a whole 35 cents to ride NYC's dirty, dangerous, graffiti-smeared trains, and "screw the passengers" pretty much summed up what riders figured the MTA thought of them.
I love movies set in New York during the 1960s and '70s in general, and I love movies set in subways, including The Incident (1967), The Warriors (1979) and even the recent Hungarian feature Kontroll (2004). So it stands to reason that I especially love a deeply cynical, bitterly funny movie set in the New York subway in the '70s. The back-and-forth between Matthau and Shaw is priceless, and Tony Roberts and Jerry Stiller deliver excellent supporting turns — especially Roberts, as the ruthlessly pragmatic deputy mayor.
PS: "Pelham One Two Three" alludes to where and when the train left its home base: Pelham Station in the Bronx, at 1:23.
Things to consider:
Claustrophobic thrillers set in subways, submarines, airplanes and the like — do you have a favorite, or do they set your teeth on edge?
New York movies — do you have a favorite period? The glamorous '50s? The anxious '60s? The jazzy '40s? Specific films?
Send your movie questions to FlickChick.
See Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this week's new flicks on the Movie Talk vodcast.
Hear Maitland on the weekly podcast TV Guide Talk.
Previously in DVD Tuesday:
Zodiac
Manhunter
A Simple Plan
Taxi Driver
Renaissance
Blowup
Hot Fuzz
300
Ace in the Hole
Eyes Without a Face
Apocalypto
Citizen Kane
La Jetée
Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)
Bob le Flambeur
Near Dark
Perfect Blue
Pan's Labyrinth
Les Girls
The Girl Who Knew Too Much
The Queen
Expresso Bongo
I'm Not Scared
Shocking Grindhouse Double Bill! — Scanners and The Candy Snatchers
Don't Look Now
Re-Animator
Casino Royale
http://community.tvguide.com/thread.jspa?threadID=800073953#comments">Pi
The Prestige
13 Tzameti
The Departed
Suspiria
Kiss and Make Up
Kiss Me Deadly
The Long Good Friday
What Alice Found
The Devil's Backbone
The Descent
The Devil Wears Prada
Pandora's Box
The Thief and the Cobbler
Nashville
Panic in the Streets/Jack Palance Interview
The Pusher Trilogy
Scarface
Slither
Sunset Blvd.
In Cold Blood
Brick
Also: This week's new DVD releases
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Sep 25, 2007 2:45 PM
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I loved Cube. Even though that cube was massive, it sure felt claustrophobic.
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Sep 25, 2007 2:59 PM
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Althought not single-set films, a few movies come to mind that use limited sets in different ways. Speed got around a limited location by making it the crux of the plot and breaking the story up into three parts. Saw made it work by having flashbacks and a second story line. Lifeboat never felt closed in. Part of the genius of Hitch, I suppose.
I guess, overall, I never really thought about it. But "claustrophobic thrillers" don't bother me. When effective, it just ramps up the suspense. That's why I love almost all airline disaster flicks. Put Karen Black behind the controls of an 80 ton airliner with 150 lives at stake and I am so there!
I have Ice Station Zebra on my DVR. Once this week's glut of TV premieres is over, I'm gonna fire it up.
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Sep 25, 2007 3:46 PM
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Oh yeah... I love seeing New York in the 20's, 30's, 40's, 60's and 70's. I especially love seeing real footage from the 20's and 30's like in this documentary of Valentino I just watched a few weeks ago. Some funeral!! I love to see what people wore and how they looked.
But I think my favorite might be the 50's with a little push into the early 60's. The Broadway heyday with the lights and all. The shape of the cars. Late night partyers sitting at the counter of diners. Coffee shops with beats. I love it.
Times square 70's sleeze runs a close second though!
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Sep 25, 2007 3:51 PM
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My favorite movie about the sweet site of New York is probably Seredipity. It makes the city seem so romantic and beautiful. My favorite movie set in New York and not nearly as flattering is Taxi Driver. In both those movies I think New York is a character.
I love the movie Red Eye, as far as a claustrophic thriller. I hate most things from Wes Craven, but not this one. I'm a big Cillian Murphy fan, so maybe that's it. I like to think it's the taut suspense and uneasiness of the movie.
SuperJosh79 mentioned Cube. I'm not sure love is what I felt for the movie - but it is claustrophic - uncomfortably so.
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Sep 25, 2007 4:43 PM
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When it comes to claustrophobic movies, I'm a total sucker for a good submarine-flick, whether the movie is great (Das Boot), not so great (U-571) or just kinda goofy (Crimson Tide). I love 'em all! I mean, honestly, I doubt there is any greater joy in cinema than hearing Jürgen Prochnow exclaim "Verdammt!" 40 times in a single movie? Ahh, Jürgen Prochnow, I love you! 
As for other claustrophobic movies... well... does movies where people are trapped in a really scare place count? 'Cause then I'd say that Alien and The Shining would top the list.
As for New York movies, there is a film-podcast I love that every show does a top 5 list on some topic, and I honestly can't do better than their New York list, so here it is:
1. Taxi Driver
2. Do The Right Thing
3. Manhattan
4. Dog Day Afternoon
5. Roger Dodger
Beat that. I can especially recommend Roger Dodger, that's a FANTASTIC overlooked movie starring Cambell Scott and that kid from Squid and the Whale (another great New York movie). Some honourable mentions: Wall Street, Escape from New York, the Woody Allen pantheon, Smoke and West Side Story.
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Sep 25, 2007 5:12 PM
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I don't think that list can be beat, Oskar. If we're going to break NYC down by sections, then Hair for Central Park.
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Sep 25, 2007 5:44 PM
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I too love gritty '70s movies set in NYC, and 1-2-3 is my favorite (The Out-of-Towners, Dog Day Afternoon, and The French Connection are high on my list also). This latest version is actually the third one - there was a TV version made in the '80s that wasn't bad.
The story is tight and timeless, so hopefully it's one that can't be screwed up. Denzel's involvement is encouraging, as he has a pretty good track record.
As for claustrophobic movies, The Descent is a terrific recent example - and probably the best horror/suspense movie of the past five years.
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Sep 25, 2007 9:20 PM
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It may have been Reservoir Dogs that prompted me to rent Pelham on VHS several years ago. I agree with you Maitland. It was as tight a suspense/action flick as could be.
As for a favorite period for NYC films it's hard to pick. I've always had a thing for the pre-modern age-1890 or so thorugh WWI. I love seeing early and prototypical versions of modern devices and developements and seeing how they've evolved over the years-the time when mankind was beginning to move faster both physically and culturally.
For me and, I think, anyone who has ever lived there, "New York" means "Manhattan" and most of my picks are set there whether they were actually filmed there. My favorite period? Hard to choose.
The 20's and 30's are great for the same scientific reason plus the architecture and fashion-one of the few times in which fashion interests me at all. And both Art Nouveau and Art Deco designs send me. Little things like early 20th century cigarette lighters fascinate me. So does travel by airship. In fact Maitland, I've been meaning to ask your suggestions for good dirigible movies (Sky Captain and the etc. excepted).
The 40's have the cars and I love the women's clothing and especially hairstyles of that period(geez, I make myself a liar. There's fashion again). And I love the slang and wisecracks.
The 50's and early '60s films that are centered around the bohemian life of the Village are, along with the Dead End Kids and gangster flicks of the 30's and 40's, much of what inspired me to move there in the mid- 70's.
And those gloriuous furiously paced just beginning-to-dare films of the 70's, like Pelham, belong to my favorite period for color films. New York just looks so great in those. And there was still much of what existed in the earlier decades left to see. I get an anachronistic thrill seeing them juxstaposed against the emerging developements.
I can't think of a single flick from the 80's or 90's in which New York as a character really touched me. Partly becasue I just can't remember right now and partly because the 80's, which began with the murder of John Lennon, was a decade that for me was marked by so much I despised: The excesses of the cocaine and disco culture; a replacement of bohemian individualism and soul seeking with trendiness and un-upmanship; the awful awful awful awful music; the return to tunnel-visioned right wing values. As with everything else New York was right in front with those things as well.
I'll probably come up with a few more films to add to my NYC favorites list, but off the bat:
The Roaring Twenties,Public Enemy, Angels With Dirty Faces and the Dead End/East Side Kids/Bowery Boys movies even though I guess they were Hollywood-as-New York films.
Next Stop Greenwich Village
The Taking Of Pelham 123-I agree with feverdog about Dog Day and French too.
A Raisin In The Sun
Dark Odyssey-New York at its absolute black and white late-on-a- Sunday afternoon best. The most ordinary of New York settings shot breathtakingly beautifully. This film will so make you wish that Radley Metzger hadn't turned to the "artistic" soft-core porn that he made almost exclusively afterward save for The Cat and the Canary.Odyssey so perfectly shows what it's like to be in Manhattan during daytime's off hours and when most everyone is either inside or out of town.
Breakfast At Tiffany's-Audrey Hepburn and New York? Puh-leeze. I can't even remember how much I liked the film-just the idea of the combination alone knocks me out.
The Godfather One and Two.
A Bronx Tale (a rare non-Manhattan entry.)
A Rage In Harlem
The Pawnbroker
She's Gotta Have It
Taxi Driver/Son Of Sam-I was a Manhattan based taxi driver during the time those films were set so they both resonate for me.
Spider-Man 2
My Dinner With Andre'-I saw this one under protest. How could such a film possibly be of any interest? Boy was I wrong.
Tarzan' New York Adventure
Serpico
The Thin Man-the New York of my fantasies in which I am the impeccably dressed constantly sightly buzzed trading wisecracks and innuendo and nuzzling with Myrna Loy. Oh Golly.
Hoodlum-so so so underrated and overlooked.
Harlem Nights. I know, I'm the only person beside Eddie Murphy who likes this film but I think that along with Golden Child (repeat caveat) and
Like feverdog I almost mentioned The Out Of Towners(the first one of course) but NYC is kind of the bad guy in that one isn't it? Can't say I disliked it but I prefer flms that celebrate the city. And speaking of Sandy Dennis-I'd consider putting Up The Down Staircase on the list.
Most of Woody's New York flicks fit the bill. But I think he really takes advantage of the city's beauty in Everyone Says I Love You, the film in which Goldie Hawn out sexy's the half-her-age Julia Roberts by a city mile.
Scorcese does a great job with the city too and it is only my disappointment with the incompleteness of Gangs Of New York that keeps that film off the list. As with Suetonius' The Twelve Caesars and Caligula what was in the book but left out of the film was so outrageous-but fascinating-that I reckon the makers figured no one would believe it. The Five Points era and its developement from pre-revolutionary times through the first decade of the 20th century is a subject that is rife with neglected potential. Any suggestions of films about that subject would be appreciated too.
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Sep 26, 2007 4:42 AM
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Whew!
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Sep 26, 2007 4:46 AM
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A nod to pickers of nit: For some reason I can't edit my long post but of course I meant to type "one-upmanship" in paragraph seven and somewhere in there I mis-typed "because". And in the paragraph about The Thin Man it should read "slightly buzzed wealthy amateur private dick.." and in the Harlem Nights segment I was planning to go on to mention not only Golden Child and Life as favorite Eddie Murphy movies but also Coming To America which is also a New York flick.
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Sep 26, 2007 4:49 AM
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DaMess, I see your point, but if NYC is the bad guy, so what? Would you like your favorite movie star less if he played a villain? When Denzel did that, he won an Oscar.
Summer of Sam is a good choice too (although it's got way too much profanity for my taste); not too long ago I was so obsessed I watched it two, three times a week.
(And I didn't much like it at all when I first saw it in the theater.) One of those that grows on you (me).
Oh, and Coming To America is imo Eddie Murphy's best movie (and The Golden Child is his most underrated).
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Sep 27, 2007 1:42 AM
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feverdog
I certainly would never say that I would like a favorite movie star less if he or she played a villain and I certainly never said so in my post. The evidence is there in my list unless you consider
Tom Powers (The Public Enemy)
Travis Bickle
Vito Corleone
Rocky Sullivan (Angels With Dirty Faces)
to be good guys instead of the murderous psycho scum that they were. Denzel is definitely a favorite and he was hardly a good guy in Training Day. Two of my absolute favorite actors are Cagney and Jean Gabin. They both made careers out of playing bad guys although Gabin was usually more of an outlaw than a villain. But Cagney’s Cody Jarrett (White Heat) and especially Ralph Cotter (Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye) are among the most unredeemable sociopaths to ever walk on celluloid. And Cagney’s portrayals of them are among my favorite of his or anyone else’s performances.
Although I think it happens more in television I think it is a particular flaw that American filmmakers sometimes think that a protagonist has to have something redeemable or good about him. I don’t subscribe to this belief. If I did then many of the films on the above list and on my favorites list on my profile page, would not be there.
And then there’s:
Duke Mantee
Caligula
Alex Forrest and (I’m not kidding here) Scarlett O’Hara (if you don’t think so just ask Ashley Wilkes, Melanie Hamilton or little Bonnie Blue Butler) all of whom I consider to be extremely bad people but great film characters and played by (with the exception of Glenn Close) some of my favorite actors.
I mention that NYC is the bad guy in The Out Of Towners to contrast it with most of the other films on my list. In those NYC is usually celebrated or at worst benign. As a person who loves New York, seeing it portrayed negatively goes against my natural grain. It doesn’t (as I most clearly said) mean I disliked the film. There’s a difference between what I may or may not like and whether or not something is good or even legitimate. I have preferences but they aren’t dictates and I’m always glad to find a film that I like whether it goes against those preferences or not. It doesn’t mean they will change, just that it's important to take film or just about anything eles on a case by case basis. And even when I don't like something that doesn't mean it's bad. I call this my "Pink Floyd Rule". I don't like Pink Floyd but I certainly don't think they suck. They're just not my kind of band. And then there's the "Billy Joel Rule". I really and truly dislike the majority of his work but he has written a song or two that I was forced to admit I thought was pretty good and even enjoyed. Although I have considered changing the Billy Joel Rule to the "If A Thousand Chimps Were Locked In A Room With Paintbrushes and Canvas For a Thousand Years One Of Them Will Will Eventually Produce Something Akin To A Real Painting Rule". But I like chimps more than I like Billy Joel.
I totally agree with you about Golden Child. I thought the knocks against that film were out of line. Most I heard or read seemed to posit that there was a certain type of role that Eddie Murphy should confine himself to and I think that is wrong. He has proved himself to be much more versatile an actor than he’s been given credit for and, like any actor, he’s got a right to take any role that someone is willing to give him. I can think of at least one instance in which I was outraged at the casting of a certain part and was surprised t find how effective the actor turned out to be. That was Michael Keaton’s Batman. Even though I had a lot of problems with the film itself Keaton really handled the role (s) well. I thought that he was too puny to play Batman and not handsome enough to play Bruce Wayne. Turns out he did a great job and impressed me more than other actors I thought were much better suited to the role.
And sorry for writing “Son of Sam” instead of Summer Of Sam. But watching it two or three times a week? Your pup’s not sending you messages is he feverdog?
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Sep 27, 2007 3:12 AM
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And what about suggestions for dirigible movies? Anybody?
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Sep 27, 2007 3:13 AM
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