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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.

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