70'S CINEMA GOLDMINE: The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) by Craig Hammill

1974’s original The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (directed by Joseph Sargent, screenplay by Peter Stone) is one of those fascinatingly perfect movies made by a group of professionals who probably wanted to make something riveting and entertaining and, through the sheer brilliant skill of their craft, turned a potboiler into scrappy art.

The story is all genre thrills: a highly prepared team of thieves led by the always calm Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw-when is this guy ever not great?) take hostages on a New York Subway train then demand $1 million dollars ransom in an hour or passengers get executed every minute thereafter.

Grumpy transit cop Walter Matthau suddenly has to figure out how best to catch the thieves before they pull off this most audacious of heists. Especially since the question from the beginning is “how the heck are the thieves going to avoid capture and get out of the subway tunnel?” But you better believe they have a plan.

The 1970’s saw a whole trend of disaster movies-the Airport series, The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake, etc-where flashy posters of masses of screaming people going down in an orgy of flames and twisted metal-somehow got the audiences into the seats.

Pelham, while not exactly in that trend (it’s more of a thriller-heist movie), is disaster-adjacent but has a crazy ace up its sleeve: it starts immediately with the heist and never lets up (the other movies often spent 30-60mns just setting up the starry ensemble cast’s back stories). The movie is a minute for minute pulse pounder that pulls off the nifty hat trick of having a dynamite first, second, AND third act!

It also surreptitiously smuggles in a great panorama of New York City life. We see everyone from the Mayor’s office to the subway workers to the passengers to the NYPD cops dealing (or not dealing) with the crisis. And the movie constantly cross cuts between these 4-5 different levels of action so it’s a cracker jack box of jangling jostling tension.

It’s a formal stylistic strategy that pays dividends within the first 10 minutes of the movie where we cross cut from the thieves taking over the train to Walter Matthau frustratingly leading a tour of Japanese subway executives to mid-level subway employees realizing that something is wrong. And it never lets up from there.

It’s ridiculously amazing cast (Matthau, Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam, and a starry sky of great 70’s character actors) finds way to constantly add grace notes of personality. Joseph Sargent’s gritty taut 70’s direction is very much in the Spielberg/Friedkin thriller vein. And, maybe most important of all, the movie hums along its tracks with a dynamite script by Peter Stone who wrote the equally delightful and thrilling Charade (also co-starring Matthau).

If you’re a moviemaker, you could do a lot worse than to take a week to read these two Peter Stone scripts. They are swiss watches of construction, character, humor, sequence as cinematic confection. These movies are the equivalent of eating two chocolate eclairs made by a world class confectioner.

We won’t ruin it here but the final act-where Matthau is playing a cat and mouse game with Robert Shaw and the thieves-ends with a final scene that literally ends with a final shot that is both a belly laugh and a great “plant-payoff” twist.

And oh! How could we forget the incredible funky 70’s horns heavy score by David Shire. Easily one of the best soundtracks in a decade that gave us amazing soundtracks.

Pelham is one of those movies that somehow elevates into greatness BECAUSE of its consummate craft. It’s not that it’s directed by an auteur (it’s not-Sargent was very much a journeyman director). But because everyone is really giving it their all, the movie becomes a kind of collective auteur work. Where craftspeople, at the height of their powers, somehow produce a cathedral of cinema.

Plus there is not one dull second in the entire picture.

So if you’re looking for your next big 70’s discovery, take a pulse pounding ride on Pelham 123.

Written by Craig Hammill. Founder.Programmer of Secret Movie Club