The Taking of Pelham 123 is a 2009 American action thriller film directed by Tony Scott from a screenplay by Brian Helgeland. It is the third film adaptation of the John Godey novel of the same name (following the 1974 theatrical film and 1998 television film). The film is about a train dispatcher (Denzel Washington), who is pressed into the role of negotiator after a criminal (John Travolta) hijacks a subway car of passengers.
The film was released by Sony Pictures Releasing on June 12, 2009. It grossed $150.2 million against a production budget of $100–110 million and received mixed reviews from critics.
Plot A man calling himself Ryder and his accomplices – Bashkin, Emri, and former train operator Phil Ramos – hijack Pelham 123, a New York City Subway 6 train, at 77th Street. Uncoupling the front car of the train below 51st Street, Bashkin kills an intervening plainclothes New York City Transit Police officer as they take its passengers hostage. 26 year Metropolitan Transportation Authority veteran Walter Garber, working the Rail Control Center as a train dispatcher, receives a call from Ryder, demanding $10 million in cash to be paid within 60 minutes. Ryder warns that every minute he waits past the deadline, he will kill a hostage.
Garber reluctantly negotiates with Ryder as Ramos and Emri set up Internet access in the tunnel. On his laptop, Ryder watches the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunge nearly 1,000 points in response to the hijacking. A hostage's laptop also connects to the Internet, and its webcam allows the control center to observe Ryder and Ramos. Garber's boss sends him home as Lieutenant Camonetti of the New York City Police Department Emergency Service Unit takes over negotiations. This infuriates Ryder, and he kills Jerry Pollard: the train's motorman to force Camonetti to bring Garber back into the building.
Camonetti learns that Garber is being investigated for allegedly accepting a $35,000 bribe over a contract for new subway cars. Ryder also discovers the allegations online and forces Garber to confess by threatening to kill a teen passenger. To save the hostage, Garber claims that he was offered the bribe while deciding between two companies, using the money to pay for his daughters' college tuition, and insists he would have made the same decision regardless. The mayor agrees to Ryder's ransom, ordering the police to bring it. En route, the police car crashes, failing to deliver the money in time. An enraged Ryder threatens to execute a child's mother, but another hostage, a former soldier named Wallace, sacrifices himself and is killed. A brief gunfight erupts after an Emergency Service Unit sniper is bitten by a rat and discharges his weapon, killing Ramos. Ryder demands that Garber deliver the ransom money himself to avoid coming in contact with the police. Garber is flown to the terminal, where he is given a pistol for protection.
The police discover that Ryder is Dennis Ford, a former stockbroker who ran a private equity firm on Wall Street. He was sentenced to prison for embezzling $20 million from the city's pension fund, which was his biggest client. Ford had agreed to a plea bargain to serve three years, but because all of the stolen money was never recovered, he received ten years instead. Ford also spent the last four years of his nine-year prison stretch in the same cell block as Ramos, and was released from Clinton Correctional Facility two weeks ago. One of the mayor's aides mentions the extreme drop in the major stock indexes, and the mayor infers that Ryder is attempting to manipulate the market via put options.
Ryder brings Garber aboard and orders him to operate the train down the tunnel below 33rd Street, where Garber and the hijackers exit, rigging the train to go on without them. Garber manages to separate himself at a railway crossing and then follows Ryder to Track 61 underneath the Waldorf Astoria hotel. Ryder parts from Bashkin and Emri, who are shot dead after being surrounded by police and provoking deadly force in an apparent suicide by cop. The train comes to a screeching halt safely just before Coney Island (West 8th Street-New York Aquarium), and the police discover that Ryder is no longer on board.
Ryder hails a taxi, with Garber following him on-foot, and finds out that his scheme has amassed $307 million. Garber steals a truck and pursues Ryder. After a brief chase, they reach the Manhattan Bridge's pedestrian walkway, where Garber catches up with Ryder and holds him at gunpoint. Ryder, refusing to return to prison, gives Garber a 10-second ultimatum to pull the trigger, and in the final seconds, pulls out his own gun, forcing Garber to shoot him in the chest. He dies as Garber solemnly looks on and Camonetti observes approvingly from a helicopter. The mayor thanks Garber and assures him the city will "go to bat" for him over his bribery admission. Garber returns home to his wife Theresa, with the milk he had promised to pick up.
Cast Denzel Washington as Walter Garber, an MTA subway dispatcher, who is negotiating with the hijackers. The negotiator in the 1974 film was a transit policeman named Lt. Zachary Garber (portrayed by Walter Matthau); Edward James Olmos played Detective Anthony Piscotti, the negotiator in the 1998 television movie. John Travolta as Dennis 'Ryder' Ford / Mr. Blue, the leader of the hijackers. Instead of playing a mercenary, he plays a former Wall Street "high roller" who blames New York City and the mayor for causing him to stay in prison for 10 years, longer than his plea deal of three years. Travolta earned $20 million for his work in the film. The role was originally portrayed by Robert Shaw in the 1974 film. Vincent D'Onofrio played Ryder in the 1998 TV movie. In the first two movies, Ryder used the alias "Mr. Blue". John Turturro as Lieutenant Vincent Camonetti, hostage negotiator with the NYPD's Emergency Service Unit. Luis Guzman as Phil Ramos / Mr. Green, former MTA motorman, one of the hijackers. The role, originally named "Harold Longman", alias "Mr. Green", was portrayed by Martin Balsam in the 1974 film. Richard Schiff played him in the 1998 film. Michael Rispoli as John Johnson, Garber's boss and head of the MTA's Rail Control Center James Gandolfini as the Mayor of New York, who is under heavy pressure to address the hostage crisis. The character was originally portrayed by Lee Wallace in the 1974 film. Frank Wood as Police Commissioner Sterman John Benjamin Hickey as Deputy Mayor LaSalle Gary Basaraba as Jerry Pollard, original motorman of the hijacked train Ramon Rodriguez as Delgado, an MTA train dispatcher Gbenga Akinnagbe as Wallace, one of the hostages on the train. Katherine Sigismund as Mother Aunjanue Ellis as Theresa, Garber's wife Alex Kaluzhsky as George Tonye Patano as Regina, MTA conductor on the hijacked train Jason Butler Harner as Mr. Thomas, a hostage who has to pee Robert Vataj as Emri / Mr. Brown, the stammering young gun, who helps hijack the train under the command of Ryder. The character originally named "Steever" was portrayed by Earl Hindman in the 1974 film. Jake Siciliano as an eight-year-old boy who is held hostage with his mom. Victor Gojcaj as Bashkin / Mr. Gray, the most aggressive of the hijackers. The character, originally named "Joe Welcome", alias "Mr. Grey", was portrayed by Hector Elizondo in the 1974 film. Donnie Wahlberg played him in the 1998 TV movie. Brian Haley as Police Captain Hill Adrian Martinez as Cabbie
Differences The first drafts of the script faced the challenge of updating the novel with contemporary technology, including cell phones, global positioning systems, the Internet, laptops, and thermal imaging, as well as the environment of a post-9/11 world in New York City. In December 2007, David Koepp, who adapted the novel for Scott and Washington said:
I wrote many drafts to try and put it in the present day and keep all the great execution that was there from the first one. It’s thirty years later so you have to take certain things into account. Hopefully we came up with a clever way to move it to the present.
Koepp's drafts were meant to be "essentially familiar" to those who read the novel, preserving the "great hero vs. villain thing" of the original. Brian Helgeland, the only one who received credit for the screenplay, took the script in a different direction, making the remake more like the 1974 film than the novel and, as Helgeland put it, making it about "two guys who weren't necessarily all that different from each other". As writer Michael Ordoña describes it:
Whereas the novel is told from more than 30 perspectives — keeping readers off balance because it is unknown which characters the writer might suddenly discard — the two films focus on the lead hijacker and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority employee with whom he communicates by phone. The new version sharpens that focus until it's almost exclusively a duel between disgraced MTA dispatcher Walter Garber and manic gunman Ryder.
In the book and original film, Ryder is "cold-blooded and calculating", but in the 2009 film, he is a "loose cannon willing to kill innocents not out of necessity but out of spite". Also, Ryder in the original film and book is portrayed as a normal-looking businessman, while in the 2009 film, he looks as if he has adopted prison life, sporting very visible prison tattoos, and the laid-back style of a biker.
In the 1974 film, the main character (played by Walter Matthau) is named Zachary Garber and is a lieutenant in the transit police; in the 2009 film, the main character (played by Denzel Washington) is named Walter Garber (which incidentally may be an in-house tribute to the late Walter Matthau), and works as a subway train dispatcher.
Ryder also demands $10 million instead of $1 million as in the original film and book or $5 million in the made-for-TV film. Ryder does not use the "Mr. Blue" nickname as in the original film. Instead, Ryder is a nickname adopted by Dennis Ford.
In the 1974 film, the train-operating hostage-taker is the only member of the group to live long enough to see himself behind bars, while all of the hostage-takers die in the 2009 film.
Production Production began in March 2008 with all cast and crew being required to attend a track safety course taught by MTA personnel, as much of the filming would take place in the subway on active tracks. For the initial hijack sequence at Grand Central on the Flushing Line, the crew used the westbound track during late night hours while regular 7 train service operated in both directions on the eastbound track. An R142A train (the model previously used on the 6 train at the time) was used for the Grand Central sequence. Many locations in Brooklyn were used during filming. A large portion was filmed on the Transit Museum local track between the Hoyt–Schermerhorn Streets station and the New York Transit Museum on the Fulton Street Line.
For exterior filming only, R62A car #2079 was used during filming to give the appearance of an R142A car. Interior car scenes were filmed at the Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens on a set that more closely resembles the newer and larger R160B (which were still being delivered at the time of filming). Outdoor street filming locations were the lower level of the Manhattan Bridge; Tudor City, including the First Avenue tunnel near the Headquarters of the United Nations; the Upper East Side; Times Square and the Theater District area; the Whitlock Avenue station on the Pelham Line in Hunts Point, Bronx; and Turtle Bay. Some scenes were also shot in Lower Manhattan.
The scene with the police leaving the Brooklyn Federal Reserve, which does not exist, was actually the rear of the United States Postal Service Office of the Inspector General, located next to the World Trade Center, in front of the PATH station entrance.
Release and marketing