THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE (1974)

There are 250 miles of track in the New York City Subway system, an unfathomably vast network that runs across four of the city’s five boroughs, used by over 3.5M passengers every day. The breadth of understanding necessary to run this system is mind-boggling, not unlike what Hackney Carriage drivers in London dub ‘The Knowledge’—the memorised maps of every borough, neighbourhood, street and dead-end in the city.

The job of anyone working in the subway system is to keep it all ticking along, their jobs invisible as the city flows through the tunnels and out along elevated tracks. The ideal day would be no excitement whatsoever—which is why transit cop Lieutenant Zachary Garber (Walter Matthau) is happily nodding off when we first meet him. With a putrid yellow tie hanging below his lovable droopy-dog face, Matthau is a far cry from the combustible, sexualised movie cops of the 1980s—John McClane he is not—but then, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three isn’t about heroics. It’s about getting through a horrible shift at work. Maybe Garber has something in common with McClane after all.

The day for him begins uneventfully, like any other. He gives a sleepy tour on auto-pilot to Japanese tourists, Lieutenant Rico Patrone (Jerry Stiller) putting in: “We had a bomb scare yesterday, but it turned out to be a cantaloupe”. On Garber’s desk is not a gun and holster, but an ashtray and a gigantic box of Aspirin. It’s a headache-inducing job. Aren’t they all?

The headache today will be a full-blown migraine: over radio Garber is contacted by ‘Mr Blue’ (Robert Shaw), one of four robbers who have hijacked a train with a carriage full of hostages, and a demand for a million dollars in ransom money. Matthau’s hard-bitten lower-east side accent makes everything sound like a nuisance, while Shaw’s stiff Englishness evokes a coil dangerously waiting to spring.

Mr Blue’s team, comprised of Misters Green, Grey and Brown (a precursor to the colour-coded names in 1992’s Reservoir Dogs), are a bunch dressed in woollen overcoats, bow ties and hats, indistinguishable from any other middle-aged men taking the subway in the 1970s. Like Garber, they’re ordinary men, designed to go unnoticed until it’s time to make their presence known. Armed with machine guns, word is put out that they will kill one hostage for every minute that the ransom money is late.

By this point, director Joseph Sargent has familiarised us with our surroundings. We’ve joined the train as commuters, we’ve met the trainee conductor whose first day on the job might be his last, the children who want to swing from the hand-rails like monkey bars, the woman filling in a crossword puzzle to pass the time. Shooting on location, in actual moving trains, there is a vivid sense of people and texture, a society in miniature, an unforced thrum of life.

We sense that each person existed well before the doors opened and let them on, yet Sargent and Peter Stone (who adapted the film’s screenplay from John Godey’s 1973 novel), for all the charm of their film, are unsentimental. Little glimpses are offered into the hijackers’ pasts—amongst them we have one who was so unhinged that he was kicked out of the mafia, another who is an embittered ex-train driver, while Shaw’s Mr Blue is the coldest of the bunch: an ex-mercenary. We learn just enough to know that this is a potentially fracturing group comprised of dangerous men.

Likewise, Lt Garber does not lament any kind of personal life, or hypothetical wife or children back home—there is no retirement to speak of. The hostages do not take turns talking about who they hope to see if they make it out alive. Everyone is scared or else pissed off. Sargent situates his film in a recognisable world of menial jobs, exploitation, frustration, casual violence and day-to-day city living.

There aren’t any idealists or supermen. This is a world where wars are real and ongoing (one hostage responds “That’s what they told me in Vietnam”, when commanded to follow the hijacker’s orders), and where violence and uprisings exist (“we don’t want another Attica”, remarks a Mayoral aide). Shaw and his men have no lofty ideals, no grand scheme to punish or control the city. When asked why he’s chosen this career, Mr Blue responds “because the markets dried up”. There are social realities at play, with Sargent subtly weaving in a sense of economic depression that mirrored New York’s real-life financial crisis. Desperation is everywhere. With America’s poor left to starve and suffer, it is hard not to spot some irony in an advert plastered on the inside of the train for savings bonds: the slogan reads “Take stock in America”.

Yet Sargent is swift and economical, and the film moves at a dizzying pace as it stretches to encompass multiple rungs on the chain of command. An electric back-and-forth develops between Garber and Mr Blue, and soon the film is cross-cutting between the subway train, the transport police bureau, while adding to the roster control rooms, switchboards, police captains on the surface streets, money-counters, all the way up to political manoeuvrings.

Here we meet the feckless mayor (Lee Wallace), laid up sick in his four-poster bed, annoyed to be missing the last minutes of a game show. Layers of strategy are carefully assembled, orders passed down from the bottom to the top, a trickle-down of bullshit. Whilst maintaining breathless momentum, Sargent elegantly demonstrates the maddening process of disembodied orders, of decisions made by careerists. At a summit in his bedroom, the mayor considers his options. Some advisors worry about where the money will come from. His wife (Doris Roberts), puts it shrewdly: “It seems like a lot of money but just think what you’re going to get in return: eighteen sure votes”. The deputy mayor (Tony Roberts) is quick to agree. “We’re not running a democracy here, we’re running a city”. A city, or a business?

On the train, an elderly hostage wonders how much his life is worth. When he hears the figure, his response is perfectly deadpan: “That’s not so terrific”. Levels of bureaucracy and management clash, plans and cop cars crash in the street, the whole operation as tangled as the lines on the map of the subway. In almost every scene a new wrinkle, a new stake is introduced, until there are so many moving parts that the clarity of its assemblage seems like a miracle. It’s a complex web but Sargent ensures we never become lost in it.

There’s a punchiness throughout, a tough leanness that is right to the point. Deafening gunfire blasts through the darkened tunnels, while above Garber plays detective. He learns there is a plainclothes cop amongst the hostages, which provides a neat mystery of its own, and he soon deduces that one of the hijackers must have a working knowledge of subway trains, and might even be a retired train driver.

Here there are satisfying traces of Columbo (1968-1978; 1989-2003), while the stand-offs in the tunnels are pure ’70s siege movie, Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) at 70 mph—there’s even a taste of the disaster movies that were popular at the time, a city and populace in peril from uncontrollable forces. Sargent somehow finds room for a white-knuckle car chase through lower Manhattan, but the mechanisms of the operation on every level are just as satisfying—whether it’s seeing bundles of cash being sorted, or witnessing junction manager Caz Dolowicz’s (Tom Pedi) exasperation as he tries to get his trains moving again. “I’m going to nail his goddamn pecker to the wall”, is a typical refrain of his.

Anchoring it all are Shaw and Matthau. They’re not men destined to be enemies, nor do they feel any burning hatred for each other. They’re men eager to get their jobs done, clock off and head home. Mr Green (Martin Balsam) provides some contrasting warmth to Mr Blue, his voice whisky-soaked and his nose stuffy, but he too is just looking for a decent payday so he can leave behind his grimy apartment. Like Jamie Foxx’s cab driver Max, the under-the-gun protagonist of Collateral (2004), most of these people are ground down, worn out, and thinking of some tropical oasis, far away from the concrete and metal hell of the humming cities. One day the work will be over, and is that our reward? Is that all?

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is about cynicism, but it is not a cynical film, and Sargent is careful not to paint with broad strokes. After a hostage is racially abused and physically assaulted by Mr Grey (Hector Elizondo), a fellow passenger is truly shaken. “It’s terrible”, he says. Later, another hostage meditates as the train hurtles towards potential disaster. These are people just trying to survive, people who have worked and fought, and amongst them there is an unspoken solidarity. Nobody is willing to give up.

With the current state of action cinema increasingly fantastical and individualised, here is something we find all but missing today: a story that foregrounds the working class, and the unspoken unity amongst strangers. It isn’t idealistic but it isn’t hopeless, either. There are stakes, there is risk, entirely because the hostages could be any of us, because the protectors and the villains are ordinary, funny, reserved, tangible, eccentric. Many things, not just a uniform mindset. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is a very special thing: an almost peerless action spectacle that at its very source is not about the noise of gunfire or wheels on metal, but rather the cacophonous music of everyday human life.

USA | 1975 | 104 MINUTES | 2.35:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH • SPANISH

Limited Edition 4K Ultra HD Special Features:

This Arrow Video release of the film is a 4K restoration from the original camera negative, presented with Dolby Vision. From the outset, it’s a gorgeous-looking update that keeps the film’s gritty image intact. The depth of colour is striking, particularly in the iconic seventies fashion on display—Matthau’s yellow tie leaps horrifyingly off the screen. The image is sharp and clear, with plenty of detail to be found in each frame. The film’s underground scenes have deep, natural blacks, with the fluorescent lights from the train providing a very pleasing glow. The original lossless mono audio track sounds tremendous. David Shire’s score is front and centre here – the funk drumming sounding particularly crisp and punchy. It’s a very well-balanced mix overall, with dialogue clear as a bell and weight to the gunfire.

• ‘The Mapping of Pelham One Two Three’—NEW ‘then and now’ tour of the film’s locations by critic Bryan Reesman, featuring Jodi Shapiro, curator of the New York Transit Museum. The making of the film is absolutely fascinating, particularly the commitment to real locations, including an abandoned subway station in Manhattan. This feature is the most interesting of the bunch, offering insight into just what a challenge it would have been to run a film production from the tunnels.
• Central to Pelham One Two Three–NEW filmed appreciation by Barry Forshaw, author of American Noir. Another good extra that delves into what makes the film stand out amongst its peers, with Forshaw offering keen insight into the film and its legacy.
• 12 Minutes with Mr. Grey and Shades of Grey. Two interviews with actor Hector Elizondo, who is unforgettable as the repulsive Mr Grey, and here we learn about how he was cast in the film, and insight into the production and legacy.
• Cutting on Action—2016 interview with editor Gerald B. Greenberg
• The Sound of the City—2016 interview with composer David Shire. It’s a treat to hear the iconic composer speak, and here there is some fantastic information about how Shire would use every-day sounds like traffic and construction work to influence his scores.
• Above and Below—2018 interview with director of photography Owen Roizman. It’s mind-boggling to consider the difficulties of shooting a film in a subway system, and Owen Roizman’s insight into the experience is essential to understanding how the film was shot, with careful attention to the planning and storyboarding.
• Taking the Ride—2018 featurette exploring the film’s New York City locations
• The Making of Pelham One Two Three—vintage production featurette from the point of view of real-life New York City transit policeman Carmine Foresta. Arrow’s archive extras are always a treat, and here we get some choice footage of NYC in the seventies. It highlights just how authentic the finished film feels.
• Theatrical trailer.
• TV spot.
• Radio spots.
• Image and poster gallery.
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sam Hadley.
• Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Priscilla Page, Glenn Kenny, Mark Cunliffe & Guy Adams.

Cast & Crew

director: Joseph Sargent.
writer: Peter Stone (based on the novel by John Godey).
starring: Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam, Héctor Elizondo, Earl Hindman, James Broderick, Dick O’Neill, Lee Wallace, Tony Roberts, Tom Pedi, Jerry Stiller & Beatrice Winde.