Spoonatects
Am i the only one who thinks........Average?
Lucia Ayala
It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
Rexanne
It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny
Leofwine_draca
THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123 is an ill-advised TV movie remake of the original classic with Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw. Why they keep remaking classics I have no idea, because there's no chance they'll improve on the original. The Denzel Washington version was better than this but still nowhere near close to the original film's quality.Based on the same screenplay, the story plays out exactly the same here, albeit with a much cheaper budget and scuzzy, dated-looking direction which tries to be hip and stylish in that late '90s way (that invariably looks embarrassing to the modern viewer). The cast is the best thing about this, with solid bad guy turns from the likes of the reliable Vincent D'Onofrio, Donnie Wahlberg, and Richard Schiff, while Edward James Olmos is equally tough as the transit cop. You can't help but wonder why they bothered, though.
bpoind
Every single actor in the 1974 movie was better than any of the actors in this TV remake. I guess they needed a New York accent, so they threw in Lorraine Bracco. Nice save.One thing the TV movie really glossed over was the issue of getting the ransom money to the terrorists on time. You'd really have to watch the 1974 movie to see the difference. Getting things done in one hour was a real nail-biter in the original movie. It's like "meh" in the TV movie.And that really leads me to the most important point: almost nobody seems to be afraid in the TV movie, including the hostages. You have one woman having one, strangely short-term panic attack. She has to carry the emotional load for her torpid companions, it seems to me. She recovers, inexplicably, without meds. Most of the time she seems perfectly rational.I have no idea what Stuart Copland had in mind with that score of his, but its pretty meditative compared to David Shire's work. All- in- all, I was not happy with the TV movie.
John Bale
A cold murderous high jacker with three associates, takes a train and holds it and its passengers hostage, killing one at a time to obtain a large ransom. Based on an earlier film of the same title, which I have not viewed, this TV version suffers a little from modest budgets and a less than sterling cast. Vincent d'Onofrios, as the senior high jacker, a quirky rather wooden actor at best, fleetingly looking like a young Orson Welles, does what he can to provide sinister menace to his role, while Edward James Olmos is not a very impressive substitute for the formidable Walter Matthau. However it is fair to comment this is a reasonable thriller for TV, and the grainy dark underground railway sequences are quite suspenseful. Makes me keen to see the original film.
oguer22656
I don't know why Hollywood feels the need to re-do classic movies. Can they not come up with original storylines anymore? This tv movie was lacking in so many areas. The actors had no chemistry, the dialog was banal, and the action seemed contrived. Don't waste your time on this one. Rent or better yet, buy the original starring Walter Matthau.
