“The
Taking of Pelham 1 2 3”
Movie Review
The Taking of Pelham is a 1974 American criminal drama
film starring Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam, and Hector Elizondo
that was produced by Gabriel Katzka and Edgar J. Scherick and directed by
Joseph Sargent. The same-named novel by Morton Freedgood, who wrote it under
the pseudonym John Godey, served as the inspiration for Peter Stone's script.
The train's radio call sign, which identifies where and
when it started its journey in this case at the Pelham Bay Park station in the
Bronx at 1:23 p.m., served as the inspiration for the title. The New York City
Transit Authority refused to schedule any trains to depart Pelham Bay Park
station at 1:23 for a number of years following the movie's debut.
The movie was a box office hit and earned positive reviews
from reviewers, who named it one of the best movies of 1974. Similar to the
novel, the movie centers on a group of thieves holding commuters hostage aboard
a subway car in New York City in exchange for ransom. It has "one of the
best and most inventive thriller scores of the 1970s" in terms of
music.
Four guys in New York City board the same downtown 6
Train, Pelham 1-2-3, at various stations while donning similar disguises and
concealing firearms. They hold 18 people hostage in the first vehicle,
including the conductor and an undercover police officer, under the codenames
Mr. Blue, Mr. Green, Mr. Grey, and Mr. Brown.
In a radio conversation with Lieutenant Zachary Garber of
the New York City Transit Police, Blue demands a $1 million ransom be provided
precisely in one hour or he will kill one prisoner for each minute it is late.
Garber always says "Gesundheit" in response to Green's sporadic
sneezes. While speculating on the hijackers' escape strategy, Garber, Lt.
Patrone, and other team members work together. Since the hijackers were able to
decouple the head car and park it in the tunnel below 28th Street, Garber
assumes that one of them must have been a former motorman.
Blue is a former British Army Colonel who served as a
mercenary in Africa, according to the hijackers' conversations. Green was a
motorman who got caught up in a heroin bust, and Blue does not trust Grey since
he was expelled from the mafia for acting erratically. As he reaches the halted
train at that same moment, Grey shoots and kills a supervisor dispatched from
Grand Central.
A police car carrying the ransom is traveling uptown at a
high rate of speed when it crashes well before it reaches 28th Street. As the
due day approaches, Garber deceives Blue by telling him that the money has
arrived at the station entry and just has to be carried the remaining distance
to the train. The ransom is delivered by a police motorbike in the meantime. One
of the several police snipers in the tunnel shoots at Brown as two patrolmen
carry the cash down the tunnel, and the hijackers and police engage in gunfire.
Blue avenges himself by killing the conductor.
The funds are distributed among the hijackers after
delivery. Blue gives Garber the go-ahead to restart the subway line, turn the
traffic lights green all the way to South Ferry, and remove the cops from the
nearby stations. However, Green shifts the train further south before the
procedure is finished. Blue adds that he desired more separation from the cops
within the tunnel when Garber became frightened.
The train is driven without someone at the controls thanks
to the hijackers' override of the dead-man's switch. Where the train halted, Garber
joins Inspector Daniels above ground. The train is started and the hijackers
exit. The undercover cop leaps off the train and hides between the rails as the
hijackers make their way to the emergency exit of the tunnel. Garber and
Daniels drive south over the path of the train, unaware that the hijackers had
abandoned the vehicle. The train accelerates in the absence of a driver.
The hijackers gather their disguises and weapons for
disposal, but when Grey refuses to give up his pistol, Blue engages in a
shootout and kills him. While Green makes his way out of the building by the
emergency exit and onto the street, the undercover cop shoots and kills Brown
and engages Blue in a gunfight.
Garber comes to the conclusion that the hijackers avoided
the dead-man feature and left the train after observing its most recent
suspicious activity. When Blue is about to murder the undercover cop, he goes
to the location where the train had stopped, uses the same emergency escape
from street level, and confronts Blue. Blue purposely inserts his foot against
the third rail and electrocutes himself because there is no other way out.
Pelham 1-2-3 is now speeding through the southbound
tunnel. Its speed causes the automatic safety to be activated when it
approaches the South Ferry loop. It comes to a screeching end, the captives
hurt but safe.
Garber assumes that the lone survivor must be a motorman
since none of the three deceased hijackers were. Garber and Patrone approach
Harold Longman's door after going over a list of recently released motormen.
Longman allows them in after rapidly concealing the loot, bluffs his way
through their questioning, and then sneers angrily at being accused. Garber
promises to return with a warrant for a search. Longman sneezes as Garber locks
the apartment door behind him, and Garber immediately responds
"Gesundheit" as he had done on the radio. Reopening the door, Garber
offers Longman a sardonic, knowing look.
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