Category: Hector Elizondo

THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE (1974)

By Marc S. Sanders

I’m a big fan of gritty, urban crime thrillers.  A wealth of them came out in the 1970s.  There was a rawness to their material.  They were equal opportunity offenders, picking on every race and demographic out there. It only lent an honesty to the characters that occupied these spaces.  The two guys that easily come to mind are Dirty Harry and Popeye Doyle from The French Connection.  Still, there were others that wedged their way through the cracks.  The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three from 1974 belongs in this fraternity of films as well. 

Walter Matthau is Lt. Zachary Garber, who has a ho hum job working the law enforcement area of the New York City subway system.  Beyond muggings and vagrants lying around you wouldn’t expect any major crimes to happen underground and thus Zach moves with a slow pace that never gets him upended or panicked.  Yet, on the day that he is giving a tour to some visiting Japanese subway architects, a hijacking of the train to Pelham Bay, number one two three, occurs.  Four armed men, only designated by Mr. Blue, Mr. Green, Mr. Grey and Mr. Brown don fake mustaches, hats and overcoats.  They are demanding a cash ransom from the city in the amount of one million dollars.  Zach and his crew have less than an hour to respond with the money, or Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw) will order the killing of one hostage for every sixty second delay.

Joseph Sargent’s film then steers its way into several conundrums.  Even if the ransom is paid according to the criminals’ exact instructions, how are these guys going to make an escape from underground?  What’s the nebbishy mayor supposed to do?  He’s in bed with the flu and he doesn’t know how to respond to this kind of craziness.  What’s the point of him making a public appearance near the scene of the crime? 

Long before everyone’s favorite hostage flick, Die Hard, came about Sargent’s movie was poking fun at the humorous and inconvenient cracks that leak out of a serious captive crisis.  First you gotta get the mayor to agree to the demands and as his wife (Doris Roberts) sensibly points out, there are seventeen potential voters on that train.  Then, you gotta count the money and drive it from uptown to midtown before the clock runs out.  That’s not so easy.  You think New Yorkers get out of the way when a speeding patrol car is barreling through the city? 

Zach doesn’t have it so easy as well.  Schluby Walter Matthau is great at trying to contain a situation but his co-workers are not so understanding.  Rush hour is less than two hours away and this stand still train is holding up the subway traffic.  Dick O’Neil and Jerry Stiller are genuine hilarity born directly out of the concrete jungle for roles like this. O’Neil has to keep all tracks open and the trains moving.  Initially, Stiller doesn’t take this seriously – a precursor to his Frank Costanza role on Seinfeld.

Robert Shaw was always one of the best villains and antagonists with films like From Russia With Love, The Sting, and Jaws.  He’s just as good here, but like those other characters, Mr. Blue is unique.  He carries a uniform, hospital cornered method, and he keeps it to the letter so well, that he’s relaxed enough to play his crossword puzzle as he waits for the money to arrive.  Martin Balsam is Mr. Green, a nervous underling recruited for operating the train.  Hector Elizondo is a crazed kamikaze kind of guy who might just knock the criminals plan out of whack because he’s a little too trigger happy.

The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three carries a simple plot.  What makes it complicated though are the characters surrounding the story.  There are a few levelheaded guys on both sides, but it’s the others around them and even the daily happenings of New York City that tilts any progress to be made off kilter. 

The city and many of these characters are unpredictable and therefore surprises will trip everything up just when it all seems to fall into place.  This even happens in the very, very, very last scene and caption of the film.  I’d love to share what a simple involuntary action that can break any of our concentrations does for a couple of these guys, but then I’d spoil the fun.  Trust me though, you get the last laugh before the end credits roll.

THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE (1974)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Joseph Sargent
CAST: Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam, Hector Elizondo
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 98% Certified Fresh

PLOT: An NYC transit chief must outmaneuver a gang of armed professionals who have hijacked a New York subway train and threatened to kill one hostage per minute unless their demands are met.


How?  How is it possible that it’s taken me this long, until fifty years after its release, to finally watch the original The Taking of Pelham One Two Three?  Until now, my knowledge of the film included only its title, its basic plot, and the fact it was remade with John Travolta and Denzel Washington.  Now that I’ve seen the original, my desire to watch the remake has dwindled from microscopic to zilch.  This is one of the most thrilling heist films I’ve ever seen, and its influences are clearly felt in the best thrillers in the decades since its release, from Die Hard to Speed to Reservoir Dogs.

In the first half of the 1970s, widely regarded as one of New York City’s worst decades (at least by me, anyway), four armed men methodically hijack a subway train, decouple the engine from the rest of the train, and bring it to a stop between stations.  Their leader, known only as Mister Blue (Robert Shaw), radios the transit system authorities with his ultimatum: deliver one million dollars to the train in one hour and leave quietly or he and his companions will kill one hostage for every minute the money is late.

The chaos that ensues is sprinkled with the kind of humor I did not expect from any cop thriller made before Die Hard.  The transit chief, Lt. Garber (Walter Matthau as an unlikely but strangely convincing action hero), must interrupt a tour he is giving to a visiting cadre of Japanese subway officials.  Colorful dialogue is provided to the transit system engineers and administrators as their carefully maintained schedule is destroyed by the hijackers.  One of Garber’s associates shows where his priorities lie when, in the middle of a hostage crisis, he complains, “Jesus…you realize the goddamn rush hour starts in an hour?!”  This and many other moments provide welcome comic relief, but they are also firmly grounded in the reality of career officials under a great deal of stress.  There is never a moment that doesn’t feel exactly right.

When it becomes clear the hijackers mean business and will have no compunction about following through on their threats, important logistical questions arise.  Where will they get the million dollars from?  The bedridden city mayor (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Ed Koch, four years before the real Koch was elected) doesn’t know.  The hijackers want it in specific numbers of bundles of fifties and hundreds.  How long will it take to assemble the money correctly, assuming they even GET the money?  Lt. Garber raises an interesting question: where will the hijackers go once they get their money?  They can’t simply get off at the next station, and they can’t leave the controls of the train while it’s in motion, thanks to the “dead man’s switch” that prevents such a thing.  What’s their end game?  Another transit official, played by Jerry Stiller, has the answer: “They’re gonna fly the train to Cuba.”

These and many other questions (including why the train is called Pelham One Two Three) are answered during the film’s running time, although one of them is answered without getting too specific because either it really is impossible to do so, or the filmmakers had no desire to lay out a step-by-step procedural for budding criminals.

One of the most important factors in the film’s success is its slam-bang pacing.  I’m not saying it’s cut together like Run Lola Run or an MTV video, not at all.  But the flow of the film is meticulously managed to keep the suspense going even when not much is happening on the train for their one-hour waiting period.  This is accomplished by having a local beat cop happen upon the train and provide close-cover reconnaissance to the transit authorities.  There’s also suspense among the passengers, obviously, as they plead with their captors.  (They provide more comic relief when one of them asks how much their captors are asking for their release.  “One million dollars,” one of them answers.  The hostage takes a perfectly timed beat, then says, “That’s not so terrific.”  Welcome to New York, ladies and gentlemen.)

Everything comes together so efficiently, so elegantly, that it’s a bit depressing that the film’s director, Joseph Sargent, would return to his roots and make a string of TV movies with only one other high-profile film to his name 1987’s Jaws: The Revenge.  That these two movies were made by the same director is mind-boggling.

I do have one quibble, though, and I will do my best to spoil as little as possible.  It involves a showdown where one man has a gun and the other doesn’t, and the infamous “third rail” in New York’s subway system.  If someone can successfully explain to me why one of those two men makes the choice he does, I will be happy to mail them a shiny new penny.  As it stands, that man’s decision made zero sense to me.  It almost felt like the screenwriter had written himself into a corner.  It was the one questionable moment in the entire film for me, but it did not ruin the movie, for what it’s worth.  It’s still an amazing ride.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three deserves to be mentioned on any list of great ‘70s thrillers like The French Connection and Dog Day Afternoon, especially the latter with its tricky mix of humor and suspense.  It grips you with its realism and credibility right from the opening scenes and barrels along with barely a minute to breath right up to the literal final image.  This is superior filmmaking, and any fan of film, at any level, needs to add this to their must-watch list.