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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.

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