The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
Directed by Joseph Sargent
Written by Peter Stone from a novel by John Godey
1974/US
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Mr. Blue: I once had a man shot for talking to me like that.
Mr. Gray: Yeah, well, that’s the difference between you and me. I’ve always done my own killing.

Despite some pretty cringe-worthy stereotyping, this is thoroughly entertaining.

The setting is 1974 New York City.  Four men enter a subway train at different stations wearing disguises.  Their leader is “Mr. Blue” (Robert Shaw). Mr. Blue is absolutely ruthless and cold.  The others are Mr. Brown (Earl Hindman), former train operator Mr. Green (Martin Balsam), and psycho Mr. Gray (Hector Elizondo).  They soon congregate in the front car, decouple the rest of the train, terrorize the personnel and passengers and highjack the train.

Mr. Blue calls into the NYC subway command center and demands one million dollars in cash within the hour.  Otherwise, he will kill one of the 18 hostages per minute.  He expects his instructions to be complied with to the letter.  It’s not that easy to come up with in the cash-strapped city and the unpopular mayor of the city dithers about paying it.

Transit Police Lt. Garber (Walter Matthau) is in charge of coordinating the chaos on the command center and the situation on the train.  The rest of the movie races at full throttle towards an exciting finale.

This sort of reminded me in tone of something like Airport (1970) or The Poseidon Adventure (1972). All the passengers represent some kind of stereotype of New Yorkers of the era and lots of fun is had with city politics.  The suspense builds nicely though and Matthau and Shaw are fantastic antagonists.  Recommended to those looking for this particular kind of good time.