Subway train dispatcher Walter Garber (Denzel Washington) goes John McClane in the drama “The Taking of Pelham 123.” |
For all of its visual bombast, Hollywood action stars and updated screenplay by “L.A. Confidential” writer Brian Helgeland, “The Taking of Pelham 123” remains a passionless and shallow crime drama propped up by stilted action sequences and a rock-video style purloined from the 1980s.
Minimal visualist Tony Scott directs “Pelham 123” as a routine Hollywood thriller refashioned from Joseph Sargent’s gritty, superior 1974 original starring Walter Matthau as a New York cop trying to stop a subway train hijacker.
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