Y’all Seen This One?: The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)
Some thoughts on the 1974 film The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.
Note: some of these movies have been around for a while so assume there will be some spoilers throughout.
Good day or evening. This is a series I plan on adding entries to throughout the year when time allows—and years to come if I remember to—called “Y’all Seen This One?” where I watch classic/popular/however you want to define it movies that apparently everyone but me has seen. I’m open to changing the series name but at this point, telling me to change it would only make me double down so here we are.
Like most white guys in their thirties, I saw Reservoir Dogs in college and it rearranged my brain. I was previously unfamiliar with the work of Quentin Tarantino, so it was a baptism of sorts1. The one thing I was struck by were the character aliases—Mr. Brown, Mr. White, Mr. Blonde, so on and so forth. I was so transfixed and challenged by the movie, I just assumed all of this sprang organically out of the brilliant mind of QT. I have watched other movies since then. I have also become more familiar with QT and his style of filmmaking, which has opened me up to other genres I wouldn’t have otherwise sought out. All those paths lead to me finally watching the 1974 thriller featuring a gang of criminals using color-coded nicknames: The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.
It was during this time in college that I got really into junk crime thrillers. Street Kings, Righteous Kill, just to name the only two other examples I can remember off the top of my head before getting to my third example. Every now and then a Gone Baby Gone would sneak in and truly blow my mind. My laptop was overheating from all the Redbox rentals and homework I was procrastinating on.
The other junk thriller I remember watching was the 2009 remake of today’s subject, The Taking of Pelham 123, a numerically streamlined title. Directed by Tony Scott, starring Denzel Washington and John Travolta, and set in post-9/11 New York, all I remember is the hyper-violence and frenetic editing. A Tony Scott (RIP) special indeed. I may or may not have been aware that it was remake at the time. I certainly didn’t know that all the movies were adapted from a novel.
Doesn’t matter. Point is, one late April night in 2025, I was able to finally sit down and watch the original and you guys were right; great movie. Truly excellent, one could even say. As soon as David Shire brings the horns in on that opening score, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three had its hooks in me.
Last year, I finally got around to Walter Hill’s Southern Comfort, a deliberately paced thriller about National Guard soldiers lost in the Louisiana bayou and was struck by how carefully all the pieces were being laid out on the board, so to speak. We learn about each man, just enough without bogging them down with too much backstory, and slowly get a sense the stakes they’re up against. It makes the action electric when it comes time to knock down the first domino.
Pelham One Two Three opens with four men in trench coats boarding the same train at different stops. As the credits roll, we watch the train system in actions by direct observation or bits of dialogue from the conductor. Led by Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw), the men take 18 hostages in the front car. It’s never good when someone opens their trench coat on a subway, even worse when it’s to pull out a gun.
I have a dark confession to make: I’ve never seen Jaws, so this was my first encounter with Robert Shaw. This was the Travolta part in the remake and from what I remember, there was more backstory added to his character and he was more of a brute. Shaw’s Mr. Blue calmly enters the movie like he’s just another passenger on the train and maintains the same even-keelednees when he starts making good on his threats to his hostages.
Mr. Blue and the rest of the gang—Mr. Green, Mr. Grey, and Mr. Brown—are all fleshed out as character with bits of exposition that come out organically as they carry out their plan. It also helps that they have the most incredible faces. Everyone in this movie does, but especially Martin Balsam, Earl Hindman, and a baby-faced Héctor Elizondo as the rest of Mr. Blue’s gang. My research assistant2 also brought to my attention that Earl Hindman was Wilson, Tim Taylor’s neighbor on Home Improvement. It’s a real treat getting to his face completely unobstructed by a picket fence so we can see his glorious ‘74 stache.
If I had to complain about one thing in today’s movies, it’s that the heroes are too pretty. I mean sure, we expect them to be attractive in some way, but they’re too polished. I just watched Thunderbolts* and while it’s a movie I enjoyed just fine, I don’t buy your “rag-tag team of losers” when they’re all absolutely gorgeous. You just put some dirt on their faces, gave them fake teeth, and expected us to eat whatever slop you handed us. Sorry, back to the topic at hand.
All of this was just me ramping up to one of my takeaways from my first viewing of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three: we used to be a proper country that let guys like Walter Matthau be leading men.
Matthau had one of the greatest faces and voices in cinematic history and they’re both put to excellent work here. Lt. Zachary Garber, the transit cop negotiating with the hijackers. I will say that watching this movie from the seventies in the year of our Lord 2025, our hero wouldn’t be introduced being racist to a group of Japanese officials asssuming they don’t speaking any English. It is a brilliant move in the script though to reveal that they’ve understood him perfectly the entire time.
If anything, the picture being painted for us with Matthau and the rest of the operations center, which also features a young(er) Jerry Stiller, is that the guys coming to save the day are a little rough around the edges and very behind the eight ball. It’s a real slobs vs. snobs when it comes to showing down with the hijackers.
Anyway, everyone was right; great movie! I leave you now with the final frame, another excellent shot of the Matthau Mug. Gesundheit.
It was Bible college, so this was me making a funny.
Wikipedia.