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The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 Our rating: Your rating:   MPAA rating: R (for violence and pervasive language) Genre: Action, Suspense Theater release: June 12, 2009 by Columbia Pictures Directed by: Tony Scott Runtime: 1 hour 46 minutes Cast: Denzel Washington (Walter Garber), John Travolta (Ryder), John Turturro (Camonetti), Luis Guzman (Phil Ramos), James Gandolfini (Mayor) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Every day, the New York City subways carry over 4.3 million people around town. It's a more or less efficient system, depending on time of day, the weather, the state of the tracks and the train, and whether the passengers comply with the rules. Trains are delayed for logistical reasons, signal malfunctions, investigations in stations, and various other reasons. I ride the subway nearly every day, and have for the last four years.

What rarely happens—and what sounds completely terrifying to subway riders—is a hijacking. The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3—an agile and tense update of the 1974 classic—plays on just that idea.

Denzel Washington as Lieutenant Zachary Garber

On an ordinary Manhattan day, just before 2:13 p.m., a hijacker who calls himself Ryder (John Travolta), along with his band of surly companions, boards the Pelham-bound train number 123 (the 6 train, for those in the know), stops it between stations just above 42nd Street, decouples the first car from the rest of the train and takes the passengers in the first car hostage. He radios into the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) headquarters and demands ten million dollars from the mayor within an hour, or he'll shoot the hostages one by one.

Walter Garber (Denzel Washington) is sitting on the desk that controls that train line, and he receives the call. As he struggles to communicate with Ryder and preserve the lives of the hostages, facts about both men's lives begin to emerge—and the whole city gets involved in the conflict.

It's a workhorse cast—Travolta is a maniacally frightening villain, and James Gandolfini's turn as the mayor proves he probably has a lengthy comic career in front of him—and they are aptly directed by Scott, as they throw off potentially overdramatic lines and moments with a realistic nonchalance. The film begins to lose steam by the end but never falls apart, and for the most part, the script is funny, dramatic, and wound so tight that you might have some white knuckles when you leave.

John Travolta as Ryder

What's brilliant about Pelham is that it completely avoids the typical stereotype of New York as the cold, dirty, gritty rat's nest of Scorcese's era—or, alternately, as the sleek rom-com world populated by pretty people. Instead, it captures accurately and with some humor those New Yorkers who live neither glamorous nor destitute lives—in short, a whole lot of people. From locations to trains to the transit mumbo-jumbo, this film is accurate to all but the last note: the stock market averages that flash across various screens are comically high in a post-recession town. (Obviously, Pelham was shot before September 2008.)

I'm not sure whether the humor will play quite as uproariously to audiences outside of New York, but the theatre I was in reverberated with laughter. These jokes are funny, because they're true, though they're split between humor with wide appeal and more Big Apple "insider" fare.

The film also captures a town in which people are used to inconvenience. The train stops on the tracks, and everyone sighs, but rarely do people get nervous. Catastrophes happen and people still manage to laugh, roll their eyes, or just not even notice, because inconvenience is a way of life in New York City—and which makes Pelham's blend of suspense, action, and comedy spot-on.

Thankfully, Pelham's themes resonate no matter where you live. The film's snappy, stylized opening sequence and breakneck pace belie the monumental questions at play here, such as: Who is innocent? Who is guilty? Are our lives governed by chance, or fate? And who among us deserves death and life?

James Gandolfini as the mayor

These are questions that even Christian theologians find difficult to answer: we are all guilty and deserving of death, but yet, it is not for humans to decide who should die for their sins, and when. Or is it? Arguments over abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, and war confront these issues every day. 

The dilemma is summed up in one of the film's penetrating radio-mediated interchanges. Garber begins to suspect from Ryder's comments that he is Catholic, and reminds him that a good Catholic would know that he has a trainload of innocents who shouldn't die.

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