Heck of a week for getting our first look at Tony Scott’s The Taking Of Pelham 123 – first came the launch of the movie’s poster, and now the trailer for the Denzel Washington/John Travolta thriller has gone live over at Yahoo! Movies.
The remake of Joseph Sargent’s 1974 heist thriller, The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three, Scott’s modern update sees Washington’s Everyman New York subway controller go head-to-head with Travolta’s psycho criminal, after the latter hijacks a subway train.
The original, which pitted Walter Matthau against Robert Shaw’s cold-blooded Mr. Blue, was an undeniably tense, but playful affair. The remake, apart from one brief exchange between Washington’s character and his wife regarding milk, seems to be a much more intense, serious and, dare we say, dour affair.
It’s very Tony Scott, with jazzy, flashy camerawork and whiplash editing, and clearly it’s on a bigger scale than the original, even if it does appear to adhere to many of the same beats.
But the real star of the show here – yes, even beyond James Gandolfini’s appearance as the Mayor of New York (a prospect that would surely terrify everybody in the city) – is the radio interplay between Washington and Travolta. With Brian Helgeland scripting their exchanges, we’re hoping for something of the calibre of the relationship between John McClane and Hans Gruber in Die Hard. Fingers crossed…