The Taking Of Pelham 123

John Travolta is laughably hammy as a madman who takes a new york city subway train hostage in "The Taking Of Pelham 123." You can practically see the flopsweat as he chews every piece of scenery he can get his increasingly meaty paws on but to no effect. He's got lots of tics but no character.

Denzel Washington is stuck playing a role he's played dozens of times before- the cool guy at the center of chaos.
He does just fine with the role, but it's sketched in the most superficial of terms. It's really only there to get the mechanics of the plot going.

Director Tony Scott uses every cheap camera trick he can think of to ramp up the energy before the opening titles are even over. His motto seems to be, why shoot from a tripod when you can shoot a scene from helicopter, or rather 2 helicopters.
All the showiness of it seems to indicate he doesn't trust the source material and doesn't trust the audience either. The film feels like it was shot by a 22 year old hopped up on coke, speed, and meth all at once.

This remake of a gritty 1974 hostage drama seems destined to run endlessly on rainy saturday afternoons on basic cable.
It's got a lot of energy, and the compact nature of the story keeps the film going at a brisk clip. But it's just empty images moving across the screen.

"The Taking Of Pelham 123:" C