The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

1998

Crime / Drama / Thriller

7
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 35% · 100 ratings
IMDb Rating 5.2/10 10 1291 1.3K

new york city based on novel or book ransom hostage hijacking remake

Director

Félix Enríquez Alcalá Photo
Félix Enríquez Alcalá

Top cast

Philip Akin Photo
Philip Akin as ESU Lieutenant
Kenneth Welsh Photo
Kenneth Welsh as Caz Hollowitz
Catherine Blythe Photo
Catherine Blythe as Video Camerawoman
Michael A. Miranda Photo
Michael A. Miranda as Denny Alcala
720p.WEB 1080p.WEB
829.68 MB
1280*960
English 2.0
NR
us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 30 min
Seeds 4
1.5 GB
1440*1080
English 2.0
NR
us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 30 min
Seeds 6

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by johnmbale 6 / 10

Good enough for TV

A cold murderous high jacker with three associates, takes a train and holds it and its passengers hostage, killing one at a time to obtain a large ransom. Based on an earlier film of the same title, which I have not viewed, this TV version suffers a little from modest budgets and a less than sterling cast. Vincent d'Onofrios, as the senior high jacker, a quirky rather wooden actor at best, fleetingly looking like a young Orson Welles, does what he can to provide sinister menace to his role, while Edward James Olmos is not a very impressive substitute for the formidable Walter Matthau. However it is fair to comment this is a reasonable thriller for TV, and the grainy dark underground railway sequences are quite suspenseful. Makes me keen to see the original film.
Reviewed by Leofwine_draca 4 / 10

A waste of time

Reviewed by bkoganbing 4 / 10

I Miss Walter Matthau

Keeping up with the times this 1998 remake of The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three had to change certain things and deliberately changed others. One indisputable fact was that in 1998 the New York City Transit Police had ceased being a separate entity and was now just part of the NYPD. Hence Walter Matthau's character as a Transit Cop would not have existed any longer. For this version Edward James Olmos is not only a regular NYPD detective, but he's a hostage negotiator specialist.The change out the Transit Police was necessary, but part of what made the first version work so well was Walter Matthau being placed in a situation he wouldn't normally be dealing with. In that version in fact he's shepherding a bunch of Japanese railroad people around the Transit Authority Command Center when the hijacking occurs.Instead of Jerry Stiller as his partner, Olmos is paired with Lorraine Bracco, certainly women by that time were doing more than administrative work in the NYPD. The mysterious head of the four hijackers is Vincent Donofrio on the other side of the law. We don't know who he is, but he certainly didn't have the air of mystery that soldier of fortune Robert Shaw did in the Seventies. In fact we never really find out anything about Donofrio.The plot follows pretty much the story in the original version. Since it was shot in Toronto, the streets of New York where a lot of the excitement above ground as the City tries to meet the hijackers deadline is missing from this version. Seeing Donofrio and Olmos makes me wish for Matthau and Shaw. Maybe the new version that will have Denzel Washington and John Travolta as antagonists will be better.
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