The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009)
Well, you can't really blame anyone except the director for this pretty-good-not-great struggle of a crime hostage subway drama.
John Travolta is convincing enough as a smart guy gone bad, but he never quite exudes evil (he doesn't even swear very convincingly) or the craziness you'd need to try this scenario. Denzel Washington is smooth and quick and impressive as the bad guy done good (though not very bad--he just bribed some folks in Japan). The two connect over a telephone, and a lot of the movie, with all the mayhem aside, boils down to their back and forth.
Well, a lot of the movie actually boils down to editing. The camera-work is very dynamic, every scene, even a short head shot, seems to have the camera sweeping or swooping. This makes everything edgy, which of course is a good thing when you have a high stakes disaster in the works. But the editors have cut this footage as if it was Hitchcock's showers scene in Psycho. I don't mean literally (it's not a constant montage, not quite), but there is rarely, if ever, a sense of immersion and flow. We are battered by all this amazingly horrible stuff (including some really heartless killing) and it happens on the screen in a flurry of short takes and jarring snippets. We know too much that it's a movie, and the pieces are made to go together sensibly, up there, not in here, where it would be a thrill.
The director by the way is Tony Scott, an action adventure guy (Top Gun), and the movie does have a steady intensity. But there are some unneeded sentimental cornball things, too, highly unlikely, between passengers, or between one guy and his girlfriend through his laptop, which seems to run out of power at one point and then is working again later. But anyway. As usual, Washington holds his own and gives some stability to the whole, which is made up of so so many parts.
Well, you can't really blame anyone except the director for this pretty-good-not-great struggle of a crime hostage subway drama.
John Travolta is convincing enough as a smart guy gone bad, but he never quite exudes evil (he doesn't even swear very convincingly) or the craziness you'd need to try this scenario. Denzel Washington is smooth and quick and impressive as the bad guy done good (though not very bad--he just bribed some folks in Japan). The two connect over a telephone, and a lot of the movie, with all the mayhem aside, boils down to their back and forth.
Well, a lot of the movie actually boils down to editing. The camera-work is very dynamic, every scene, even a short head shot, seems to have the camera sweeping or swooping. This makes everything edgy, which of course is a good thing when you have a high stakes disaster in the works. But the editors have cut this footage as if it was Hitchcock's showers scene in Psycho. I don't mean literally (it's not a constant montage, not quite), but there is rarely, if ever, a sense of immersion and flow. We are battered by all this amazingly horrible stuff (including some really heartless killing) and it happens on the screen in a flurry of short takes and jarring snippets. We know too much that it's a movie, and the pieces are made to go together sensibly, up there, not in here, where it would be a thrill.
The director by the way is Tony Scott, an action adventure guy (Top Gun), and the movie does have a steady intensity. But there are some unneeded sentimental cornball things, too, highly unlikely, between passengers, or between one guy and his girlfriend through his laptop, which seems to run out of power at one point and then is working again later. But anyway. As usual, Washington holds his own and gives some stability to the whole, which is made up of so so many parts.