Better In Your Head?--THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE

 

Spoiler Alert: weight counts.

THE BOOK-Written by John Godey, released 1973

THE MOVIE(S)-Directed by Joseph Sargent, written by Peter Stone, released 1974

(as "The Taking Of Pelham 123") Directed by Tony Scott, written by Brian Helgeland, released 2009

THE STORY-A nutbars notion: four acquaintances hijack a subway car and demand a million dollars. If said demand is disrespected, the shooting will start. Crumblier still, doing so in cash-strapped, crime-choked New York City. Hardly a sure shot caper. And that's just the way these guys want it. Legends are made by hands keen on sifting through the debris of hubris.

MIND THE GAP-Oh how rapidly a seed, once watered, can grow. One man's harebrained scheme becomes another man's ultimate challenge becomes an entire city's wide-awake nightmare. 

While the heart of the plot is too banger to change, both films applied unique modifications. Instead of nylon stockings, Stone's script calls for the hijackers to conceal their mugs with fake facial fuzz. Furthermore, each man responds to a color-coded alias. Helgeland's script dispenses with the caution of disguise altogether. Understandably, the 21st-century Pelham integrates contemporary technology and ups the ransom (sometimes I think I'm the only person alive who'd still be hog-happy with a million-dollar payday). It also alters the main characters in unnecessary ways, and frankly the whole thing reeks of a petulant need to be different from its predecessors. 

Sargent's film just rules. The script's adherence to essence is key. Ryder/"Mr. Blue" is a phlegmatic, pragmatic former mercenary, a fatalist whose emotional shortcomings permit him access onto miry roads closed off to most other men. Dude's pure C.C.C.--cool, collected, calm--and Robert Shaw embodies him superbly. In contrast, John Travolta's Ryder is a tattooed loose cannon weighed down by a vendetta against the crooked government. He dresses like a C-tier comic book villain and speaks like a callow Tarantino acolyte. (Shaw serenely informing command center he's taken over the train is immeasurably cooler, infinitely more bad-ass, than fitting "fuck" into every sentence.)

The disparity in casts is hilarious. Besides Shaw outshining Travolta....

*Luis Guzman suffering in comparison to Martin Balsam, who was born to play Longman/Mr. Green, the disgruntled former motorman who dreamed up the whole dang shebang. (He's renamed "Ramos" in the 2009 version, 'cause ethnicity.)

*Brutish, mute-ish Steever/Mr. Brown becomes "Enri"; failed mobster Joey Welcome/Mr. Gray becomes "Bashkin." Both men are played by indistinguishable meat slabs, whereas the 1974 film had the good fortune of men with personalities, specifically Hector Elizondo and Earl Hindman.

*Denzel as Lt. Garber was a win, but no shit, it's Denzel. Ah yes, what great actor doesn't have a filmography easily split into "For All Time," "For A Good Time," and "For The Love Of God, Why?!" And that includes Walter Matthau, who originated Garber as a grouchy negotiator fighting the good fight with merely a microphone and a working man's wit in his arsenal. (There's a reason Denzel's character is named Walter Garber, and it's not because the screenwriter was a huge Steely Dan fan.)

Apple doesn't want movie baddies using iPhones, but Breitling understands the Golden Rule of Exposure.

The fates of Ryder and Longman are changed across all three tellings. The book gives the most realistic conclusions. Sargent's film provides the most memorable. Scott's film, the most contrived.

It'd be funny to say The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three did for subways what Psycho did for showers, but how in hell else are New Yorkers gonna get around?

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-Forget 2009, take me back to 1999, when Tony Scott's penultimate film would've blown my mind. When the empty calories--quick edits, guitar stabs, sterile lighting--would've sent a dopamine surge through my brain powerful enough to hallucinate a new galaxy. Take me back to 1974, and let me sully my shoes on Manhattan sidewalks, smear my face with grease from a Brooklyn slice, flee the Bronx seconds from suffocation, completely avoid Queens, spew on the ferry to and from Staten Island. 

For the first time in the BIYH? series, multiple adaptations split the difference. Pelham 1974 improves on the book by comprehending what works, what doesn't work, and what will work. Without a chaotic glut of POVs, the suspense is unbroken and thus heightened. The passengers are no longer caricatures--they act, and react, as a singular freaked-out organism. Beyond what is excised, what is added also distinguishes the film as a lean, mean, real-time good time. Oh, and it features one of cinema's greatest-ever final shots. And that soundtrack! Sweet funky Jesus.

The 2009 Pelham is better than two hours spent playing hide and seek at a dumpster during mid-August, sure.