This is a remake of an older film made in the 1070s and judging by other reviews- an improvement. It is an intense ride and both Denzel Washington and John Travolta shine. The late Tony Scott excelled in making certain types of films and this is the kind of film that he was happiest making, as opposed to elder brother Ridley who tends to choose more cerebral fare. Taking of Pelham 123 is a ride you don't wanna miss. Go see it.

This is a good remake. Is it as good as the original- depends really on which one you see first. But Travolta is menacing, and the film never outstays its welcome.

Yeah, I know. I started the review with a bad pun.This Tony Scott remake of 1974's great, great The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is just awful. Much worse than any pun I can come up with. There's literally nothing to praise here. It's as if the screenwriters broke down the script from the original and the John Godey book, and found almost nothing usable.Then they put it back together, leaving out, well, everything important. So much for reverse-engineering. You're supposed to figure out how something works when you do that, not how to screw it up.So, we get John Travolta playing his Swordfish baddie again, Denzel Washington looking disconnected and bored behind some sort of phony nerd-glasses, and not a single character to care about. It's just an opportunity for Tony Scott, a hack right down there with Michael Winner, to use a bunch of fancy-shmancy graphics and camera tricks, and tell a story that was told infinitely better in 1974.Garbage, garbage, garbage. I never once cared for anyone in this movie. I never once was engaged with the story. It's as if Scott set out to make the crappiest remake possible.He made it.

Cards on the table, I loved the original 1974 movie on which this latter-day remake was based. It was exciting, clever and funny. I don't know what it is with modern-day remakes of classic 60's and 70's films but it seems to me that directors throw almost all the good stuff out and bring in instead eye-hurting jerky-flashy camera-work, an ear-poundingly loud soundtrack which is constantly in the background and even-louder talking characters who swear and commit random acts of mindless violence whenever it suits them.So the Pelham 123 subway train in New York gets hijacked by disgruntled psychopathic Wall Street trader John Travolta as part of a devious plot to make a killing on the stock- exchange and revenge himself on the city for turfing him out of his high-paid job years before. That's your plot folks, with Denzel Washington as the demoted subway controller now running point in a desk job pending an investigation for corruption, who finds himself on duty just as Travolta and his bunch of merry men put their plan into action. For some strange reason madman Travolta hits it off with decent man Washington, ignoring professional cop negotiator John Torturro, as he executes his nefarious plan. There's the expected number of bloody killings along the way, completely irrelevant car-chases around New York where cars don't just crash, they rise vertically in the air and roll over a dozen times on collision (the police have no less than three separate accidents trying to race the ransom money across town to meet Travolta's deadline) and of course, an out of control train tearing over New York with a car-load of innocent passengers who probably wish they'd taken the bus instead.It's all unbelievable nonsense as you'd expect. I'm fast tiring of Washingston's ever-narrowing repertoire of decent-but-flawed leading men, Travolta is just awful as the loudmouth gang-leader and Torturro irrelevant as the negotiator. Only James Gandolfini shines as the city mayor who divines Travolta's real plan, wouldn't you know it, before the cops do.The direction is garishly bad, the dialogue excruciating, especially the scenes between Washington and Travolta and Washington and his wife. There's no humour present at all, although there are some unintentional laughs, like when a rat runs up the trouser leg of a police sniper just as he's taking aim at Travolta, causing him to miss.I've decided I really have to stop watching high-octane low-intelligence nonsense like this in future. Better yet, I wish Hollywood would stop making or remaking movies like this altogether.