Tony Scott’s movies feel like other people’s seizures. Man on Fire, Deja vu, Domino — if you don’t know already, there will be jump-cuts and freeze-frames, feverish close-ups and aerial pirouettes; never mind the lunging 360s around tense, seething actors. Being static is not an option; there will be plenty of time for that after you’ve been gunned down.

(Mark my words: Scott is one day going to deliver a film so unremittingly macho, audiences will be warned: “May grow moustaches, enhance male performance, cause pregnancy, start fist-fights, star Chuck Norris.” And that will just be during the opening credits.)

So rest assured, those propulsive propensities are on glaring, decibel-cranked display in Scott’s rehash of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3.

Maybe even more so since because the thriller is set in two isolated spaces — a NASA-like subway command centre and a hijacked train car — there’s always the danger of narrative inertia.

Under Scott’s direction, though, Pelham proves noisy, violent, energetic and disposable: another in its director’s ever-widening oeuvre of jacked-up industrial-strength action dramas.

Does it resonate? Frankly, I barely remember it now. But I do know that for just shy of two hours, I was pummeled into submission; well done, Mr. Scott, I surrender.

Reworking the 1974 original — which pitted Walter Matthau against Robert Shaw — Scott and scribe Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential) don’t spare a second setting the high-stakes plot into gear.

Four gunmen (led by John Travolta, sporting fierce tattoos and facial hair) have commandeered the lead car of a downtown train in New York City.

If they’re not paid $10 million in an hour, they’ll begin executing hostages.

In the wrong place at the wrong time is dispatcher Walter Garber (Denzel Washington), a bespectacled, beefy everyman in the storm of a professional scandal (he’s been accused of taking a bribe). Unfortunately for him, Travolta’s villain — going by the name Ryder — views Garber as a kindred spirit and rejects the assigned police negotiator (John Turturro).

So begins — predictably, true, but orchestrated with expert efficiency — a cat-and-mouse game of quid pro quo between the mysterious Ryder (as with all charismatic criminal masterminds, his schemes and motives are more complicated than they first appear) and the seemingly out-matched Garber.

Both actors make the most out of their respective roles with Washington’s hushed underplaying smartly countering Travolta’s glowering hyperbolic ferociousness. Still, that’s not enough for Scott, ever the mayhem maestro.

He ratchets the excitement as the clock counts down, introducing supporting players (James Gandolfini’s politically-astute mayor being a standout) and piling on subplots (a passenger on the train has a laptop web-cam, allowing the hostage-takers to be watched, while cops race through the streets to transport the ransom in time).

All of which makes this Pelham enough of a pressure cooker — with sufficient psychological crackle — to recommend.

Too bad, though, Scott surrenders to his worst instincts for a third act nearly undone by distracting, needless editing gimmickry.

But by then not even those missteps can’t derail a movie confidently rocketing down to the wire on sheer momentum, fuelled by sound, fury and Washington and Travolta’s movie-star magnetism.

credits: JamMovies | Yahoo! Movies Singapore

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Official Movie Poster

Singapore Date: 11th June 2009 Language: English Running Time: 105 mins Rating: NC16 Genre: Thriller Starring: Andy Fickman, Denzel Washington, Luis Guzman, Victor Gojcaj, John Travolta Directed by: Tony Scott Company: Columbia Pictures Singapore Distributor: Columbia Tristar Films iZone Rating: 7/10 Official Website : The Taking Of Pelham 123

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Movie Trailer

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