Anne's Underrated Movie Pick of the Week: The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

This flick is fantastic!!! If you like action, drama, suspense PLUS biting comedy, Walter Matthau, Jerry Stiller, Martin Balsam, the gritty 1970's NYC Subway system, cameos by Doris Roberts and that hedgehog lookin' squirt from 8 is Enough--well, need I go on? Easily one of my top ten favorites.

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The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

From Film Forum:

(1974) "Screw the goddamn passengers! What do they want for their thirty-five cents? To live forever?"Just a typical day on the East Side IRT, as a No. 6 train starts its downtown run from Pelham Station in The Bronx at the scheduled departure time of 1:23 PM (there's your title) – then gets hijacked by heavily-disguised men: Mr. Brown (Earl Hindman), shnurfling Mr. Green (Martin Balsam), trigger-loving Mr. Grey (Hector Elizondo), and their icy-cold leader Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw) – color-coded aliases: are you listening, Mr. Tarantino? ? This city hasn?t got a million dollars!? kvetches the schmucky, flu-plagued Koch-lookalike mayor (this was the era, after all, when Jerry Ford told NYC to “drop dead”) to hovering spin doctors when he gets that ransom ultimatum: cough up the dough in an hour or the 17 passengers (your typical fellow riders: a hooker, a philosophical old Jewish man, a mother with two bratty kids, Matthew Broderick?s dad James as the conductor, et al.) get wasted, or one corpse for each minute late. Wisecracks and bullets fly as Walter Matthau's quickwitted TA cop Lt. Zachary Garber gives a guided tour to embarrassingly polyglot Tokyo subway execs; dispatcher Jerry Stiller doesn’t believe it; the ransom-carrying cop car jackknives in Astor Place; and Matthau negotiates with the all-business Mr. Blue via subway squawkbox. A crackling adaptation by the late Peter Stone of the John Godey bestseller, featuring terrific (and accurate) Gotham locations, knife-edge hilarity, a thrilling jazz score by David Shire, and third-rail brand jolts – evoking a New York that, while not exactly the golden age, was a time when you could still buy a token... for thirty-five cents!

AN MGM DISTRIBUTION RELEASE SPECIAL THANKS TO MGM'S JOHN KIRK.

“A violent and funny hostage caper with the cynical irreverence of a vintage Jimmy Breslin column and the relentless energy of an early James Bond film… Directed with breathless expediency.”
– Bruce Bennett, The New York Sun

“A time capsule spiked with amphetamines… It may be the perfect movie for post-blackout New Yorkers. And what a cast!”
– Michael Sragow, The New Yorker

“Giddily thrilling! Bootylicious with tuba, David Shire’s score mates blaxploitation bomp to vintage-cop-show rattle and dread; indeed, Sargent’s whole enterprise doubles as a 70’s archaeological dig, its eureka momentarriving when the cop car with ransom in tow crashes in a grimy, pre-Starbucks Astor Place.”
– Jessica Winter, Village Voice