Walter Matthau tries to get to the bottom of a bizarre subway heist in THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE
THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE (Joseph Sargent, 1974)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
September 2-13
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
Loosely adapted from the book by John Godey, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three wonderfully captures the cynicism of 1970s New York City. Four heavily armed and mustached men — Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw), Mr. Green (Martin Balsam), Mr. Gray (Hector Elizondo), and Mr. Brown (Earl Hindman), colorful pseudonyms that influenced Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs — hijack an uptown 4 train, demanding one million dollars in one hour from a nearly bankrupt city or else they will kill all eighteen passengers, one at a time, minute by minute. The hapless mayor (Lee Wallace) is in bed with the flu, so Deputy Mayor Warren LaSalle (Tony Roberts) takes charge on the political end while transit detective Lt. Zachary Garber (a great Walter Matthau) and Inspector Daniels (Julius Harris) of the NYPD team up to try to figure out just how in the world the criminals expect to get away with the seemingly impossible heist. Directed by Joseph Sargent (Sybil), the film offers a nostalgic look back at a bygone era, before technology radically changed the way trains are run and police work is handled. The film also features a very funny, laconic Jerry Stiller as Lt. Rico Patrone and the beloved Kenneth McMillan as the borough commander. The film was remade as a television movie in 1998, starring Edward James Olmos, Vincent D’Onofrio, and Lorraine Bracco, and as an embarrassingly bad big-budget bomb in 2009 by Tony Scott, who we’re hoping won’t ruin his upcoming remake of The Warriors as well.
Harvey Keitel is not just a cop — he’s a cop on the edge — in Abel Ferrara’s cult classic BAD LIEUTENANT
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is screening on Sunday, September 4, in a double feature with Gordon Douglas’s 1968 police drama, The Detective, starring Frank Sinatra and Lee Remick, as part of Film Forum’s “NYPD” festival, paying tribute to the tenth anniversary of the amazing, selfless work done by New York’s Finest on September 11 (as well as every day of every year). The festival, which runs September 2-13, begins today and tomorrow with a pair of Otto Preminger flicks, 1944’s Laura and 1950’s Where the Sidewalk Ends, and continues with such cool double features as Madigan (Don Siegel, 1968) and Report to the Commissioner (Milton Kastelas, 1975) on September 6, Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957) and The Wrong Man (Alfred Hitchcock, 1957) on September 7, Phantom Lady (Robert Siodmak, 1944) and I Wake Up Screaming (H. Bruce Humberstone, 1941) on September 8, and the inspired pairing of William Friedkin’s controversial 1980 serial killer movie Cruising and Abel Ferrara’s awesome Bad Lieutenant on September 12, two pictures that are cult classics for very different reasons.