"the Taking Of Pelham 1 2 3" With This Movie Skip The Train

How badass are Denzel Washington and John Travolta..

. in other movies? I wouldn't exactly call them badass in The "Taking of Pelham 1 2 3," now available on DVD, in which they are sticking to conventions that allow them to phone it in, the static script making it doubly easy. These two have demonstrated blockbuster movie muscle so many times before but this time they've treated their roles as business as usual.

Denzel Washington gives us a by-the-numbers performance as a transit dispatcher and John Travolta hams it up as a trigger-happy villain. This is the latest overcooked Tony Scott-directed suspense thriller in which the suspense is whether or not a train-car load of one-dimensional hostages will be spared or not. The city location is New York and the characters are New York stereotypes. Scott doesn't bother to develop his background characters as far as to making them stereotypes. The hostages for the most case are a cluster of one-note ciphers.

"Pelham" overdoses though on its exhausting kineticism: endless circling shots, flash pans, hyper-zooms, slow-mo, shaky cam, shuddery frame speeds. Tony Scott, harking back to the '80's, became defined as the epitome MTV-style filmmaker of this generation adhering to the overkill formula of slicing-and-dicing.

For some reason, Washington keeps working with this director Deja Vu and Man on Fire are recent partnerships) with increasingly diminishing returns. As for Travolta, his role is a contradictory character: a disgraced Wall Street guy who is brilliant with numbers but ultimately is a bonafide nutjob who wants a $10 million ransom. We never understand Ryder's pathology when he speaks of respect of someone like Garber but hates the inhumanity of New York City as a whole.

Most of the screen time is devoted to an uneven mix of hot and cold repartee between Washington and Travolta, whom negotiate on opposite sides of a radio transmitter. The movie ultimately reaches a contrived showdown of two characters betraying their personalities, showing up at a place neither of them in their full senses would actually go. Use an alternate route, guys.

In terms of sound and picture quality: Loud and discordant clash though it is a tad impressive how the neon colors have pop and pizzazz. Features Widescreen 2.40:1 visual presentation. Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound recording, however, I had wished I could have listened to the movie in monoaural. Too noisy, boys.

The special features hit you over the head until you feel disoriented and silly. So many comments, so many self-congratulatory Hollywood clichs. In due respect, the second audio commentary, with writer Brian Helgeland and producer Todd Black, is better than the first one with director Tony Scott.

by: Sean Chavel

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