By ShMurphy on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 9:46 pm
The MBTA may be overrun with motormen who text their gal pals on company time, but at least it’s managed to keep John Travolta at bay. Director Tony Scott has other ideas.
His new thriller, The Taking of Pelham 123, imagines Mr. Travolta as a terrorist intent on wrangling $10 million out of the city of New York in exchange for a few subway hostages. In an era of billion dollar bailouts, you may ask - why set your sights so low, Johnny boy? Perhaps because Pelham 123 takes its cues from the 1974 film of the same name, which, by all accounts, packed more of a topical wallop back then than the remake does today.
In Pelham, Travolta lives out what may be another of his dormant fantasies – the former dancing queen and tamer of mechanical bulls turns hammy as a terrorist with Wall Street roots. After serving time for corporate crimes unknown, he emerges – his ears pierced and his schemes hatched – to wreak vengeance on the city that bent him over a barrel and forced him to… well, you know.
But surprisingly, pulling off a successful hijacking isn’t as easy as they make it look in the movies. Once Travolta imposes upon the unsuspecting riders, he crosses paths with Denzel Washington – always the man, even in a stifling sweater vest – who’s poised to save the day. But alas! Denzel’s hands aren’t as clean as you’d think. He’s got a history of sticking them in the cookie jar. Thus, he can understand Travolta, or at the very least, he can speak his language, and so an unexpected bromance blossoms.
As comeback vehicles go, Pelham plods along at the kind of pace that vets like Denzel and Travolta can keep up with. For their part as gatekeepers of ye ole 90s blockbusters, both still have commercial appeal with the masses. But they’ve since morphed into paunchy 50-somethings, and try as they might the marquee doesn’t burn as brightly with their names attached to it as it once did.
Not that it’s a bad thing, necessarily, or that Pelham is necessarily even a bad movie. It isn’t. Pelham makes all of the perfunctory stops you’d expect through action movie land, and even though it’s all predictable, at least it runs on time. Still, something remains inherently snooze-worthy about its basicpremise: how clever is it – really– to hijack an object that’s stuck on rails to begin with? Not even James Gandolfini’s about-face as the city’s scuzzball mayor (embroiled in a sex scandal ala Eliot Spitzer) can throw the film off its oft-charted course.
For those that miss the train on The Hangover and end up riding on Pelham 123 instead – don’t fret. You could do worse. But while Pelham isn’t a total train-wreck, you’d probably be better off just taking a bus to Blockbuster.
