‘The Taking of Pelham One Two Three’ (1974) Blu-ray (review)

Very few films evoke both the virtues of commercial American filmmaking in the 70’s and New York City pre-Giuliani as strongly as Joseph Sargent’s 1974 thriller The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.

This detail rich and perfectly paced thriller continually makes me nostalgic for a time and place I never experienced firsthand.

The plot of the film, a four-man team led by Robert Shaw hijacks an NYC subway; demanding a million dollar ransom in exactly one hour or he’ll kill a commuter a minute, might make a contemporary film fan think this is a prototype for an action film in the Die Hard mold.

It isn’t.

Our hero isn’t a gun toting man of action but a hangdog bureaucrat played brilliantly by Walter Matthau.

What plays out over 104 minutes is a war of wits and wills between Shaw (codenamed “Mr. Blue” for most of the film) and Matthau’s Lt. Garber.

The film wisely doesn’t waste a moment explaining the background of either side allowing us to infer that Mr. Blue was probably a mercenary of some kind, that Hector Elizondo’s Mr. Grey is a psychopath; and that Martin Balsam’s Mr. Green is a former employee of the City’s who is holding a grudge. Lt. Garber is front and center because he happened to be at the right console at the wrong time, and he’s trying to piece together any kind of tell from his terse and suspense filled radio conversations with Mr. Blue.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three benefits greatly from a terse, detail-rich script from Peter Stone (adapting his own novel) and careful, realistic direction from Joseph Sargent.

The idea of hijacking a subway, a vehicle you cannot make a getaway in, seems so ridiculous that even the characters in the film comment upon it, but Blue’s plan makes the premise credible in its precision. This is a great old school script with a ton of setups and payoffs (famously even up to the final image of the film) that stands as a shining example of why people get nostalgic for the Hollywood of the 1970’s.

Walter Matthau’s casting and character are also a signifier of how unique this film is.

With a plot about terrorists taking hostages, the eternal temptation would be to cast a man of action as the lead (the remake put Denzel Washington in the role), but Matthau’s character is the single best thing in the film. He’s introduced giving a patronizing tour of the Subway command hub to Japanese metro bigwigs who reveal later that they would speak English the whole time and know exactly what he’s been saying. He’s hangdog, put upon, tired and looks and behaves exactly like every civil servant I’ve ever encountered.

Robert Shaw, on the other hand, is the prototype for Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber from Die Hard.

He’s utterly ruthless, but impossible to entirely hate both because of how competent he is and because he clearly isn’t bothered by killing but won’t do it without reason. It’s a mark of his total command in this performance that we totally believe his plan will work– he’s so far ahead of his opposition that by the third act, we’re struggling to see how he could fail.

In a way, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is a strange Northeastern cousin to Peter Falk’s then contemporary TV show Columbo –we open with a perfect plan by a brilliant specialist, and the action of the piece is watching a detail-oriented and clever everyman pick through and find the chink in the armor, right up until the final “Gotcha” moment.

Extras include ainterviews, still/poster montage, trailer, and Trailers From Hell trailer.

It is a snap-shot of a New York City that was knee deep in its own malaise, and a snap-shot of a film industry that could still make tough suspense thrillers with characters who were rumpled and not always likable. It is 104 minutes with not a second wasted, and effectively balances tension and humor with skill.

Highest Recommendation.