THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123
Directed by Joseph Sargent
Written by Peter Stone
Starring Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw
Released in 1974
Directed by Joseph Sargent
Written by Peter Stone
Starring Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw
Released in 1974
Three different movies have called themselves The Taking of Pelham 123. Heck, it's a great title, suggesting a count-off to something foreboding, which in an unintended way is appropriate. Most recently there was the Washington-Travola version from 2009, written as it was by Brian Helgeland, usually a good thing, but not in the hands of director Tony Scott. Far worse was the made-for-Canadian-TV version that starred Edward James Olmos and Vincent D'onfrio, two very fine actors who did not work particularly well together. But the best version of this presumed classic remains the first, the one released in 1974, starring the universally excellent Walter Matthau, Martin Balsam, Hector Elizondo, Earl Hindman, and most especially the beautiful and brilliant Robert Shaw.
Two points require mention in any discussion of this disturbing movie. The first, as you may have guessed, is Mr. Shaw. Shaw was a Shakespearean actor as far back as the early 1960s. But his resume is even more interesting than that. Before becoming something of a household name, Shaw was both a popular novelist, a news reporter and world traveler. A lot of people got their first impression of the man in his role as Quint in Jaws. However, the tough guy image he carried in that film was mild compared to his role as Doyle Lonnegan in The Sting and most especially in tonight's classic.
Most of the time the remainder of the movie is every bit as compelling as this clip would indicate. Shaw as Mr. Blue (and yes, this movie was the inspiration for the character names in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs) chills us to the marrow as he matter-of-factly discusses with Messrs. Green, Grey and Brown how they will shoot the hostages if necessary, as he looks up from his crossword puzzle book. No, the problem with The Taking of Pelham 123 is not the acting. The problem--and it's a big one--is the extent to which filmmakers in the early 1970s would often go to try to make their product "edgy." In this case, the effort was to appear as if many of the characters are racists. This was tied to a much-deserved tendency in films of the day to shun the Pollyanna approach and to give audiences some realism. Peckinpah gave us a new style of violence, Russ Meyer gave us titillating sexuality in the occasionally ridiculous form of double-D chested women, Polanski gave us psychological horror that often surpassed Hitchcock in its intensity. And even racism managed to find its place, especially in the social exploration we encountered in Joe and of course in The French Connection. In these two movies, the racism was presented and identified with characters who, in the context of issuing forth their vile epithets, were disgusting pig people. But in Pelham, the racism is far more overt and lands somewhere between Black Hawk Down and The Birth of a Nation. Matthau, as Transit Police Lt. Garber, gets the plum assignment of escorting some Japanese visitors throughout the New York City Subway System. Convinced that they cannot understand a word he says, he patronizes them and even refers to them as "monkeys." Okay, so maybe that's just what his character would have done. And maybe a bad guy like Mr. Grey really would have called one of his victims a "nigger." I don't know. I do know that in this particular film the use of racist and sexist terminology and attitude was gratuitous rather than realistic. How do I know that? For one thing, director Joseph Sargent's credits were almost exclusively in TV cop shows such as "Longstreet" and "Kojak," none of which were exactly what one thinks of as enlightened" viewing and all of which were notorious in their use of tags to gain viewer identification. Kojak was a bald cop with a love of lollipops and Longstreet was blind. These are the tags. In Pelham, the tag is incipient racism, which is de facto gratuitous. The only reason for doing it is to blow us away with the realism, which is bullshit. The other reason I know it is gratuitous and quite despicable is because of the closing credits. We have The Maid, The Mother, The Homosexual, The Hooker, The Spanish Woman, The Pimp, The Hippie, The WASP, and so on. Now, I was able to figure out that the maid was The Maid. Same with The Mother. As to who the other characters were, I have no idea. The woman who gets called a hooker doesn't conform to my mental stereotype. I didn't see any pimp, and I was looking, believe me. And who the hell was the homosexual? The use of these word-ideas in the closing credits announces quite clearly what the intent of the director was: to cast characters with whom the audience could get off a few cheap laughs. The movie already had more than enough inexpensive merriment, mostly in the form of Matthau. It did not need--and was never unburdened by--the idiotic use of forced hatred to carry the suspense.
Two points require mention in any discussion of this disturbing movie. The first, as you may have guessed, is Mr. Shaw. Shaw was a Shakespearean actor as far back as the early 1960s. But his resume is even more interesting than that. Before becoming something of a household name, Shaw was both a popular novelist, a news reporter and world traveler. A lot of people got their first impression of the man in his role as Quint in Jaws. However, the tough guy image he carried in that film was mild compared to his role as Doyle Lonnegan in The Sting and most especially in tonight's classic.
Most of the time the remainder of the movie is every bit as compelling as this clip would indicate. Shaw as Mr. Blue (and yes, this movie was the inspiration for the character names in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs) chills us to the marrow as he matter-of-factly discusses with Messrs. Green, Grey and Brown how they will shoot the hostages if necessary, as he looks up from his crossword puzzle book. No, the problem with The Taking of Pelham 123 is not the acting. The problem--and it's a big one--is the extent to which filmmakers in the early 1970s would often go to try to make their product "edgy." In this case, the effort was to appear as if many of the characters are racists. This was tied to a much-deserved tendency in films of the day to shun the Pollyanna approach and to give audiences some realism. Peckinpah gave us a new style of violence, Russ Meyer gave us titillating sexuality in the occasionally ridiculous form of double-D chested women, Polanski gave us psychological horror that often surpassed Hitchcock in its intensity. And even racism managed to find its place, especially in the social exploration we encountered in Joe and of course in The French Connection. In these two movies, the racism was presented and identified with characters who, in the context of issuing forth their vile epithets, were disgusting pig people. But in Pelham, the racism is far more overt and lands somewhere between Black Hawk Down and The Birth of a Nation. Matthau, as Transit Police Lt. Garber, gets the plum assignment of escorting some Japanese visitors throughout the New York City Subway System. Convinced that they cannot understand a word he says, he patronizes them and even refers to them as "monkeys." Okay, so maybe that's just what his character would have done. And maybe a bad guy like Mr. Grey really would have called one of his victims a "nigger." I don't know. I do know that in this particular film the use of racist and sexist terminology and attitude was gratuitous rather than realistic. How do I know that? For one thing, director Joseph Sargent's credits were almost exclusively in TV cop shows such as "Longstreet" and "Kojak," none of which were exactly what one thinks of as enlightened" viewing and all of which were notorious in their use of tags to gain viewer identification. Kojak was a bald cop with a love of lollipops and Longstreet was blind. These are the tags. In Pelham, the tag is incipient racism, which is de facto gratuitous. The only reason for doing it is to blow us away with the realism, which is bullshit. The other reason I know it is gratuitous and quite despicable is because of the closing credits. We have The Maid, The Mother, The Homosexual, The Hooker, The Spanish Woman, The Pimp, The Hippie, The WASP, and so on. Now, I was able to figure out that the maid was The Maid. Same with The Mother. As to who the other characters were, I have no idea. The woman who gets called a hooker doesn't conform to my mental stereotype. I didn't see any pimp, and I was looking, believe me. And who the hell was the homosexual? The use of these word-ideas in the closing credits announces quite clearly what the intent of the director was: to cast characters with whom the audience could get off a few cheap laughs. The movie already had more than enough inexpensive merriment, mostly in the form of Matthau. It did not need--and was never unburdened by--the idiotic use of forced hatred to carry the suspense.
