REVIEW: Pelham 123 (2009)
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The Taking of Pelham 123
Rated: R
Runtime: 105 minutes
Starring: John Travolta, Denzel Washington
My rating: 2 stars
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What I was thinking about while watching Pelham 123:
(1) I wonder when John Travolta last made a good movie.
I tried to think of it while watching this mess of a film. I think it may be Pulp Fiction. It can't be that it's been 15 years since Travolta made anything decent, can it? In fact, it was probably Hairspray, but I didn't see that. So for me, Travolta's last good film was Primary Colors in 1998.
(2) I wonder when Denzel Washington last made a terrible movie.
I couldn't think of a single really bad Washington movie. Usually, he's the father figure-type to a group of young men (Remember the Titans). It's when he strays from that role in recent years when he falters. His last terrible film was Deja Vu in 2006. But, on average, he picks great movies.
(3) What's Jason Butler Harner doing urinating off the edge of the subway car?
Harner was 'Gordon Northcott,' the child-murdering ranch owner in Changeling. It's an underrated role he played marvelously. At the time, there was buzz of an Oscar nomination for him as well as Angelina Jolie. This is first appearance on the silver screen since. He has four lines, the first of which is “I gotta piss.”
So then I started thinking about Harner – not the movie of course because it's as bad as any clichéd action thriller – and why an actor as good as him is artistically castrated to the point of having to also say, “I can't piss,” as a hostage on a subway car.
I believe the answer is because this film sat on the shelf for a long, long time, perhaps predating Changeling in 2008.
(4) I wish we were all still thinking a stock market hovering at 12,000 was a bad thing.
That's one of the key plot points to this remake of the 1974 original. Ryder (Travolta) hijacked a subway train, and keeps checking the DOW industrial average to see how quickly and how far it plummets. It gets to as low as 11,680. Oh, dear!
Not only did this movie finish filming more than two years ago, it was in the can by Mar. 17, 2008. Why that date? The DOW dropped below 12,000 at that point, recovered briefly and again fell below 12,000 three months later. It has yet to recover from that, now 13 months later.
In the movie, that magic 12,000 barrier means that Ryder might make a ton of money because he “predicted” the market reaction to his hijacking. He could have made much more without hijacking anything, but he didn't have enough patience for the whole housing and auto market to tank. We get a crap movie as a result.
There is no need to see this movie. The plot devices are stupid, and the acting is mediocre, especially from Travolta.
In the end I thought one thing:
(5) There was a tailer before Pelham 123 for Old Dogs, a movie where “two friends and business partners find their lives turned upside down when strange circumstances lead to them being placed in the care of 7-year-old twins,” according to the IMDB.com plot. Robin Williams and Travolta star. It looks like Travolta's drought is about to hit the 12-year mark.
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Where it's playing:
Canton/PotsdamSHOWTIMES
Watertown SHOWTIMES
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