The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
There is something wonderfully unfussy about *The Taking of Pelham One Two Three*. Four men hijack a New York subway car, demand a million dollars, give the city an hour to deliver it, and threaten to start killing passengers if the money arrives late. That's essentially the entire premise. Yet Joseph Sargent turns it into one of the sharpest, funniest and most effortlessly entertaining American thrillers of the 1970s.
What makes *Pelham* so good isn't really the mechanics of the heist, clever as they are. It's the personality surrounding it. This feels like New York from the moment it begins: dirty, impatient, cynical, crowded and populated almost entirely by people who seem mildly irritated that a subway hijacking has interrupted their afternoon. The city isn't romanticised and it isn't turned into some nightmarish urban hellscape either. It's simply alive. Everyone from the cops and transit workers to the mayor, the passengers and the criminals seems to belong specifically to this place and this moment.
Walter Matthau is absolutely perfect as Lt. Zachary Garber. Casting him as the hero of a hostage thriller is almost inspired in itself. He doesn't look like an action hero and makes no attempt to behave like one. He's rumpled, sarcastic and perpetually looks as though he'd rather be somewhere else, but underneath that exterior is a remarkably capable man who gradually takes control of an extraordinary situation. Matthau never needs a heroic speech or a gunfight to convince us of Garber's intelligence. He simply thinks.
That makes him the perfect opponent for Robert Shaw's Mr. Blue. Shaw barely raises his voice and is terrifying precisely because he doesn't need to. He's calm, organised and completely convincing when he says that people will die. Around him are Martin Balsam's wonderfully nervous Mr. Green, Earl Hindman's Mr. Brown and Héctor Elizondo's volatile Mr. Grey. Their colour-coded names famously anticipate *Reservoir Dogs*, but the greater influence is perhaps the way the film gives each criminal an immediately recognisable personality without drowning us in backstory.
Peter Stone's screenplay is superb at doing exactly that. Nobody explains who they are for five minutes. We understand these people through their behaviour, their voices, their arguments and their reactions under pressure. The film trusts its actors. It is a reminder of how much character a movie can establish without exposition when you've got performers like Matthau, Shaw and Balsam.
And what a collection of character actors this has. Jerry Stiller, Doris Roberts, Tony Roberts, Julius Harris, Kenneth McMillan, James Broderick — seemingly every corner of the film contains another memorable face. Even tiny roles have personality. The passengers aren't merely anonymous bodies waiting to be rescued either; together they become a little cross-section of 1970s New York.
The humour might be the film's secret weapon. *Pelham* is genuinely funny, sometimes extremely funny, but never at the expense of the suspense. Nobody stops the movie to deliver a joke. The comedy comes naturally from bureaucratic incompetence, exhausted civil servants, New York abrasiveness and people responding to an insane situation as though it were merely another aggravation in an already aggravating city. The mayor worrying about the political consequences of paying the ransom is almost as entertaining as the hijacking itself.
Yet Sargent never allows all that humour to deflate the threat. When Mr. Blue says he'll kill someone, we believe him. As the deadline approaches, the cutting between the train, Garber's control room, City Hall and the frantic attempt to transport the ransom creates tremendous momentum. Later, when the subway itself begins hurtling through the tunnels, the film produces more excitement from a train and some flashing tunnel lights than many modern thrillers manage with enormous action sequences.
Owen Roizman's photography is another huge part of it. The subway looks grimy and physical rather than cinematic. You can practically smell the tunnels. Combined with David Shire's extraordinary score — that pounding, dissonant mixture of jazz, funk and urban noise — the film develops an identity within its opening minutes. It's one of those scores that doesn't merely accompany a movie; it tells you exactly what kind of world you've entered.
There are elements that are obviously products of 1974, particularly some of the language and attitudes. But even those contribute to its quality as a time capsule. *Pelham* doesn't feel like somebody's polished recreation of seventies New York. It feels as though somebody simply opened a door and filmed the place.
Most importantly, the film understands restraint. It doesn't need to turn Garber into an action hero or manufacture some gigantic final confrontation. It remains true to the modest, procedural intelligence that makes everything before it work. And then comes that ending.
A sneeze.
A door.
“Gesundheit.”
And Walter Matthau's face.
It's difficult to imagine a more perfectly judged final shot. The entire film ends on the same combination of intelligence, tension and deadpan humour that has sustained it for the previous hundred minutes.
*The Taking of Pelham One Two Three* is everything I love about great 1970s American genre filmmaking: economical without feeling slight, gritty without becoming miserable, funny without becoming a comedy and thrilling without constantly announcing that it's a thriller. It takes an almost absurd premise and makes it believable because the characters and the city around them feel so completely real.
One of the great New York films, one of the great subway films and simply one hell of a thriller.
**9/10**
What makes *Pelham* so good isn't really the mechanics of the heist, clever as they are. It's the personality surrounding it. This feels like New York from the moment it begins: dirty, impatient, cynical, crowded and populated almost entirely by people who seem mildly irritated that a subway hijacking has interrupted their afternoon. The city isn't romanticised and it isn't turned into some nightmarish urban hellscape either. It's simply alive. Everyone from the cops and transit workers to the mayor, the passengers and the criminals seems to belong specifically to this place and this moment.
Walter Matthau is absolutely perfect as Lt. Zachary Garber. Casting him as the hero of a hostage thriller is almost inspired in itself. He doesn't look like an action hero and makes no attempt to behave like one. He's rumpled, sarcastic and perpetually looks as though he'd rather be somewhere else, but underneath that exterior is a remarkably capable man who gradually takes control of an extraordinary situation. Matthau never needs a heroic speech or a gunfight to convince us of Garber's intelligence. He simply thinks.
That makes him the perfect opponent for Robert Shaw's Mr. Blue. Shaw barely raises his voice and is terrifying precisely because he doesn't need to. He's calm, organised and completely convincing when he says that people will die. Around him are Martin Balsam's wonderfully nervous Mr. Green, Earl Hindman's Mr. Brown and Héctor Elizondo's volatile Mr. Grey. Their colour-coded names famously anticipate *Reservoir Dogs*, but the greater influence is perhaps the way the film gives each criminal an immediately recognisable personality without drowning us in backstory.
Peter Stone's screenplay is superb at doing exactly that. Nobody explains who they are for five minutes. We understand these people through their behaviour, their voices, their arguments and their reactions under pressure. The film trusts its actors. It is a reminder of how much character a movie can establish without exposition when you've got performers like Matthau, Shaw and Balsam.
And what a collection of character actors this has. Jerry Stiller, Doris Roberts, Tony Roberts, Julius Harris, Kenneth McMillan, James Broderick — seemingly every corner of the film contains another memorable face. Even tiny roles have personality. The passengers aren't merely anonymous bodies waiting to be rescued either; together they become a little cross-section of 1970s New York.
The humour might be the film's secret weapon. *Pelham* is genuinely funny, sometimes extremely funny, but never at the expense of the suspense. Nobody stops the movie to deliver a joke. The comedy comes naturally from bureaucratic incompetence, exhausted civil servants, New York abrasiveness and people responding to an insane situation as though it were merely another aggravation in an already aggravating city. The mayor worrying about the political consequences of paying the ransom is almost as entertaining as the hijacking itself.
Yet Sargent never allows all that humour to deflate the threat. When Mr. Blue says he'll kill someone, we believe him. As the deadline approaches, the cutting between the train, Garber's control room, City Hall and the frantic attempt to transport the ransom creates tremendous momentum. Later, when the subway itself begins hurtling through the tunnels, the film produces more excitement from a train and some flashing tunnel lights than many modern thrillers manage with enormous action sequences.
Owen Roizman's photography is another huge part of it. The subway looks grimy and physical rather than cinematic. You can practically smell the tunnels. Combined with David Shire's extraordinary score — that pounding, dissonant mixture of jazz, funk and urban noise — the film develops an identity within its opening minutes. It's one of those scores that doesn't merely accompany a movie; it tells you exactly what kind of world you've entered.
There are elements that are obviously products of 1974, particularly some of the language and attitudes. But even those contribute to its quality as a time capsule. *Pelham* doesn't feel like somebody's polished recreation of seventies New York. It feels as though somebody simply opened a door and filmed the place.
Most importantly, the film understands restraint. It doesn't need to turn Garber into an action hero or manufacture some gigantic final confrontation. It remains true to the modest, procedural intelligence that makes everything before it work. And then comes that ending.
A sneeze.
A door.
“Gesundheit.”
And Walter Matthau's face.
It's difficult to imagine a more perfectly judged final shot. The entire film ends on the same combination of intelligence, tension and deadpan humour that has sustained it for the previous hundred minutes.
*The Taking of Pelham One Two Three* is everything I love about great 1970s American genre filmmaking: economical without feeling slight, gritty without becoming miserable, funny without becoming a comedy and thrilling without constantly announcing that it's a thriller. It takes an almost absurd premise and makes it believable because the characters and the city around them feel so completely real.
One of the great New York films, one of the great subway films and simply one hell of a thriller.
**9/10**
Mini Review: There is something wonderfully unfussy about *The Taking of Pelham One Two Three*. Four men hijack a New York subway car, demand a million dollars, give the city an hour to deliver it, and threaten to start killing passengers if the money arrives late. That's essentially the entire premise. Yet Joseph Sargent turns it into one of the sharpest, funniest and most effortlessly entertaining American thrillers of the 1970s. What makes *Pelham* so...
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