Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
Armed men hijack a New York City subway train, holding the passengers hostage in return for a ransom, and turning an ordinary day's work for dispatcher Walter Garber into a face-off with the mastermind behind the crime.
A competent but unremarkable remake of the 1974 thriller, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009) benefits from the chemistry between Denzel Washington and John Travolta but struggles to justify its existence beyond that. The plot follows the hostage formula closely with few surprises, and Tony Scott's hyperkinetic visual style — rapid cuts, saturated colors, Dutch angles — feels overwrought for a largely dialogue-driven tension piece. Travolta's villain is cartoonishly over-the-top compared to Robert Shaw's measured menace in the original. The resolution is rushed and unsatisfying, leaning on an action-movie chase that undercuts the psychological duel the film spent most of its runtime building. As a remake, novelty is low, and the ending deflates rather than pays off the central dynamic.