Book vs. Movie
The Taking of Pelham 123
By Russ Bickerstaff
June 15, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
In this corner: the Book. A collection of words that represent ideas when filtered through the lexical systems in a human brain. From clay tablets to bound collections of wood pulp to units of stored data, the book has been around in one format or another for some 3,800 years.
And in this corner: the Movie. A 112-year-old kid born in France to a guy named Lumiere and raised primarily in Hollywood by his uncle Charlie "the Tramp" Chaplin, this young upstart has quickly made a huge impact on society, rapidly becoming the most financially lucrative form of storytelling in the modern world.
Both square off in the ring again as Box Office Prophets presents another round of Book vs. Film.
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
Morton Freedgood was a New York native who worked for the film industry on the east coast in the early part of the 20th century. He'd been a PR guy for 20th Century Fox, Paramount and United Artists, among others. You don't become famous as a PR guy, though . . . Freedgood is better known as author and novelist John Godey, who had his most prominent success with a novel about the hijacking of a New York metro train in 1973. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three quickly became a bestseller. The following year, United Artists released a film adaptation of the novel directed by Joseph Sargent starring Robert Shaw and Walter Matthau. About ten years ago, there was a made for TV remake of the movie starring Vincent D'Onofrio and Edward James Olmos. This summer, Sony Pictures releases a new re-make of the film adaptation starring John Travolta and Denzel Washington. How does the book compare with either of the theatrical release movies? Good question . . .
(Regrettably, I haven't been able to track down a copy of the Olmos/D'Onofrio version, which is probably just as well. If I'd done so, this would've turned into a Book vs. Movie vs. Movie vs. Movie column . . . which would just be silly . . . )
The Book
Freedgood/Godey's story is a dark and gritty 1973 crime novel. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is not nearly as polished as the work of towering legends of crime fiction like Dashell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon.) What Freedgood/Godey's novel lacks in polish, it more than makes up for in sheer, darkly realistic brutality. Its darkness doesn't come from the surreal landscapes of human imagination fueled by inhuman need (as in Burroughs Naked Lunch from 1959) or in the darkness of a single person losing his compassion to society's inhuman superficiality (as in Ellis' American Psycho from 1991) but is every bit as dark and disturbing as either of these books. The novel relates the tale of a simple hijacking of a New York metro train in the interest of getting $1 million in cash (this was 1973, remember?) from the city of New York.
Freedgood/Godey takes an unflinchingly morbid and pessimistic look into the nature of society by looking at the same crime from multiple different perspectives. One character's assertion that no one is innocent seems to be coming quite directly from Freedgood/Godey himself as every character, no matter what his or her stature, turns out to have something to hide. There are no heroes here - only people. While this is far from the first work of fiction to ever take this perspective on human nature, it should be noted that works of fiction with very simplistic perceptions of good and evil (last summer's Dark Knight) still manage to become popular while being almost universally praised by critics. This kind of unflinchingly dark look at the people of New York, and by extension, people in general, is still pretty far ahead of its time.
The early 1970s New York described in the book is one where racial, ethnic and socio-economic tensions threaten to tear society apart from the ground up. There doesn't seem to be a character in the novel who isn't racist in some way, but all is not completely lost. There seem to be those who at least want to make things better for everyone and it's that virtue that rests at the heart of those characters in the novel who ultimately come off as being somewhat heroic. The novel does have a positive ending, (crime doesn't pay...the criminals don't get away thanks to the valiant efforts of a few men who prove to be good people after all) but it's clear that there is something fundamentally wrong with society. This is a novel where a few nameless, freed passengers from some of the train's cars end up making it to safety only to gang rape a 14 year-old black girl in a public restroom. The author throws that sort of thing in as a minor detail at the end of a paragraph. . . imagine that sort of detail being thrown-in at the end of the big hostage scene in The Dark Knight. That would've been dark . . .
Beyond the darkness, the author's storytelling style has clever pacing and formatting. Each chapter is subdivided into sections take from the perspectives of individual characters, which not only serves to give the kind of sweeping feel of seeing a story from every important perspective, but also allows the author some rather clever slight of hand with some of the plot elements. (One of the most interesting bits here happens when an off-duty police officer on the train is nearly detected by the hijackers. It's one of the author's more memorably original moments...)
The First Movie
The original 1974 film adaptation of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three has a very authentic vintage early ‘70s New York feel to it that is nonetheless quite entertaining to those of us who aren't big fans of that era in film.) Filmed almost entirely on location in New York, the 1974 film has plenty of vintage footage of New York in the early ‘70s that firmly establishes the film in the era the book was written in. Some of this has unintended consequences for a modern audience. In a particularly eerie moment, an actor playing the commissioner of police is found discussing the hostage situation in the back seat of a car...over his left shoulder in the window behind them the twin towers of the world trade center can clearly be seen...
The late Brit Robert Shaw (probably best known as "Quint," in Spielberg's Jaws) stars as the mastermind behind the hijack. . . giving the role a British accent that actually kind of works in the role. Here his co-conspirator is played as much less of a mastermind by Martin Balsam (probably best known as Ben Kaplan in The Delta Force.) The Balsam character is an ex-metro rail worker who helped plan everything about the hijack, but here he's just a nice guy who wants some of what's coming to him after having been wrongfully accused of smuggling narcotics on the job. The two helm a hijack with the aid of others including a guy who got kicked out of the mob played by Hector Elizondo (best known as Dr. Phillip Watters from Chicago Hope.) One interesting deviation from novel to script was something added by screenwriter Peter Stone - figuring that the hijackers wouldn't refer to each other by name in the presence of the hostages, he had them refer to each other by color codenames. The 1974 Pelham's Mr. Brown, Mr. Green, Mr. Grey and Mr. Brown pre-dated Reservoir Dogs' Brown, Blue, Orange and Brown by a good 20 years.
Standing up against the hijackers is an army of surly tough-as-nails big city bureaucrats including police Lieutenants played by Jerry Stiller (best known today as George's father in Seinfeld) and Walter Matthau (probably best known as...Walter Matthau.) While the roles lack the kind of depth available to a more complex novel, the film gives them all enough room to at least be interesting. Without as much time to populate the film with the numerous people found in the novel, a few characters get fused together, but it's nothing serious until the end. Matthau's Lt. Garber is an amalgamation of a few different characters, which is perfectly okay, as a younger Matthau is exceedingly easy to watch onscreen.
While far from being anywhere near as dark as the book, the film is somewhat fearless in its portrayal of the callous toughness of New Yorkers, who would make it through a hostage situation and still threaten to sue the city for its handling of the situation. Of particular interest here is the communication between officials and the hijackers. The dialogue as its written into the book is almost whimsically disrespectful, with New York transit police openly taunting the hijackers over the radio while reluctantly complying with their demands. This disrespect between police and criminals has its impact in the book, but takes on a whole different feel in a more dramatic presentation. This is the way New Yorkers deal with people they're forced to work with regardless of the situation, and we get a really vivid picture of that here. The problem is that it doesn't go far enough. We don't really see the ugly side of everyone and people do come across as heroes. And that means that Shaw's criminal mastermind actually comes across as a villain, who defiantly electrocutes himself to death rather than die in the significantly unglamorous fashion of the novel. The 1974 film adaptation may be a glamorized Hollywood version of the story, but its heart is firmly planted in a very gritty New York.
The Third Movie
At first glance, the idea of a modern update on a 30 year-old train hijacking premise sounds great. Conventional wisdom states that modern mainstream films can get a lot darker than they could in the ‘70s. It's a tougher world, which gives us an opportunity to get even further into the darker side of Freedgood/Godey's story, but the update softens things a little - takes much of the edge away from the author's unflinching look at human nature.
This time, John Travolta (Saturday Night Fever, Battlefield Earth) gets the challenge of playing master hijacker Ryder. Without saying a word throughout the early scenes of the film, he looks pretty menacing - not at all the type of person you'd want to find yourself on a train with. If only he could've carried that into the dialogue. The first major departure from the book that we find in the current update is the character of Garber. No longer a police lieutenant, Garber is a simple civil servant compellingly played by Denzel Washington. This switch is perhaps the single most compelling one in the entire film. In an age after September 11th and Hurricane Katrina, the latest kind of hero is one who is very good at the job he does - sometimes he makes mistakes and is subject to the same kinds of indiscretions the make us human. If there is a bright spot in this latest adaptation - if there is a reason to see it at all - it is Denzel Washington's performance as Garber.
The whole film sort of follows that path - rather than looking into the darkness the binds society, it dismisses that darkness as simple flaws that make us all human. This is a fundamental shift from the book and while it works with Denzel Washington's Walter Garber, it doesn't work as well with the rest of the film.
There are numerous differences in the actual hijacking of the train. A laptop that hasn't been discovered by the hijackers sends an Internet video feed from under one of the seats of the car, completely unbeknownst to the hijackers who seem sketchy or disinterested at best. The disgruntled former motorman who has been hired to work with Ryder on the hijacking (played here by Luis Guzman) is the first to be killed. John Turturro plays an official hostage negotiator for the city of New York. And while the film is a mishmash of things that are distinctly similar to the book, the deviations carve a tremendous gulf between the two. The worst of it is the fact that the distinct culture of New York isn't all that visible in the film. There's no racial tension - no arguments between tough as nails guys who would openly insult a guy holing a group of people hostage while simultaneously relaying their demands to the authorities.
Perhaps the biggest problem with this latest Pelham adaptation is the plot twist that gets revealed near the end of the film. It's a plot twist entirely fabricated for the motive, presumably by screenwriter Brian Helgeland The idea that Travolta's Ryder character would have planned the hijacking to make a killing in the commodities market sounds interesting. In theory, during times of crisis, the stock market falls and yes, people could theoretically plan a terrorist attack to "buy low and sell high" once the market recovered, but the events illustrated here seem kind of ridiculous. Today's market is way too unstable to be able to predict how business is going to react to the hijacking of one subway car in Manhattan. Also - the hijacking took place in the afternoon and by the end of the day, Travolta's Ryder had made six figures or more - in a single day. The way such things are regulated, there's no way he - a guy we find out is an ex-con - could have collected on that kind of money without an extensive investigation. To be fair, the stock market thing was relatively minor to the rest of the plot. The center of this movie is really the relationship between Garber and Ryder. Hitting with only one of two performances, the film is only half good.
The Verdict
Freedgood/Godey's novel was a dark look into the nature of socio-economic relations in one of the world's largest cities during a hostage crisis. The first film based on it was a watered-down version of the story that nevertheless held to its central themes and maintained the gritty New York feel of the book. The latest film adaptation updates the story for a world complete with the Internet, computer laptops and a post-September 11th view of New York as the kind of resilient city that accepts its flaws and stands together in a crisis. While not exactly in the spirit of the book, it IS an interesting mutation on the feel of the 1970s originals. Nowhere does this work better than with Denzel Washington as Walter Garber - now a former bigwig with the Transit Authority who has been handed the job of dispatcher. The reluctant heroism of a fallen civil servant who must risk his life to redeem himself is interesting, but it's not enough to make the film the kind of brilliant update that it would need to be in order to live up to the story that inspired it.