NY。ペラム駅1時23分発の地下鉄が午後2時、男4人組にジャックされる。一味は先頭車両だけ切り離し、そこにいた19人を人質に。地下鉄運行指令室のガーバーは一味の一員、ライダーと名乗る男から交渉役に指名され、“1時間以内に100ドル札を1千万ドル分準備しないと1分遅れるたびに人質をひとりずつ殺す”と要求される。やがて警察は別件で収賄容疑があるガーバーを帰宅させてしまうが、ライダーはそれに激怒し……。
映画化された原作や関連書籍を読んで、映像との違いや独自の世界観を楽しみましょう。
製作費: $100,000,000 (150億円)
興行収入: $150,166,126 (225億円)
推定収支: $50,166,126 (75億円)
※製作費・興行収入はTMDBのデータを参照しています。収支は(興行収入 - 製作費)で算出したFindKey独自の推定値であり、広告宣伝費や諸経費は含まれません (1ドル=150円換算)。
監督: トニー・スコット
脚本: John Godey / Brian Helgeland
制作: ジェイソン・ブルメンタル / Richard Baratta / トッド・ブラック
撮影監督: Tobias A. Schliessler
制作会社: Escape Artists / Columbia Pictures / Relativity Media / Scott Free Productions / Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Saw this one many years ago, probably when it came out on Blu-ray, and decided to give it another watch at random, and... pretty much lined up with from the first go around. Nothing amazing nor has any great twists, but the performances from Washington and Travolta made the movie worth the time. On the downside, as with many of his later films, Tony Scott's choppy direction was a bit annoying. **3.5/5**
Having seen (and truly loved) <em>'<a href="https://letterboxd.com/film/unstoppable-2010/" rel="nofollow">Unstoppable</a>'</em>, it's impossible not to see <em>'The Taking of Pelham 123'</em> as a rather pale incarnation of that 2010 flick (which also has Tony Scott as director and Denzel Washington as lead!). How strange that those two came together to make two very similar movies so close together. In the end, here, there is enough done to separate them, but early on especially I felt like I was watching the same film almost. For the record, that other release is so vastly better than this... so I'd recommend that more if you want a train-centric production from Scott and Washington. With all that noted, this 2009 film is still a fairly enjoyable 1hr 40mins or so - despite some questionable editing choices. A big reason for my positive rating is the aforementioned Washington, who gives as good a performance as he always tends to give - which is why he is probably my favourite actor, him or Leonardo DiCaprio anyway. John Travolta does well though, even if I kept getting <em>'<a href="https://letterboxd.com/film/face-off/" rel="nofollow">Face/Off</a>'</em> vibes throughout. Here, he made me laugh a few times and the guy has some good dialogue/delivery of said dialogue. Even if that latter element is hit-and-miss elsewhere. The rest of the cast are alright-to-meh, nice to see James Gandolfini though. It's, taking everything into account, all worth a watch, I'd say.
It’s not really fair comparing this with the much more sophisticated 1974 version of this story as Tony Scott has taken a fairly broad-brush to that template and pretty much re-characterised the whole story. That’s a story about a gang of well organised criminals who plan a daring hijack of a subway train in New York, USA. Their plan is simple enough. They seize one car and then their leader “Ryder” (John Travolta) demands $10 millions within the hour or the bodies will start mounting up. His contact in the control room is “Garber” (Denzel Washington) and soon wheels are in motion to get the cash. What’s not so clear, though, is just what the agenda of these criminals is. It’s not an excessively large sum of money and we know that “Garber” is under investigation for bribery, so is there something more sinister going on here? What is obvious is that these guys mean business and are not afraid to demonstrate that fact! Tony Scott has managed to convey something of the claustrophobic nature of the tunnels well here and Harry Gregson-Williams’s aggressive score also helps build the tension but for me, Travolta just doesn’t deliver anything on the scale of menace I wanted here. Sure, his character is vile and violent but with the story relying on a degree of ambiguity for much of it’s substance, his unsubtle and charm-free performance is all just too one-dimensional to keep the intrigue sustained. Washington, likewise, just doesn’t impose himself on the story anywhere near enough to give us any real sense of panic and the other supporting efforts are all a bit too underwhelming too, delivering a great deal of wasteful shouty dialogue as this thing rather lumbers along as if it were stuck at the lights, too. It probably didn’t need remaking but it does remind you just how good Robert Shaw was on the less is more front.
