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Jul 15, 2016 Web Exclusive By Stephen Danay

It’s a typical day in New York City. The streets are filthy, the people are in a hurry and the subway is crowded. It’s all the MTA command center can do to keep the trains running on time. That job becomes all the more difficult when four heavily-armed men hijack a downtown 6 train and hold eighteen passengers for ransom, grinding the city to a halt and stranding one grumpy police lieutenant in the middle of the action.

Although it will likely seem tame to many modern viewers, The Taking of Pelham 123 is embedded deep in the DNA of the action genre. Its ticking clock hostage scenario presages Speed, its schlubby working-class hero – Walter Matthau in a remarkably bad suit – is a proto-John McClane, and its impossible heist set-up is a general blueprint for… well, basically every heist movie made since. Even subtle details, such as the crooks having color-themed nicknames, have been appropriated by no less than Tarantino himself.

And yet, despite all its obvious genre-related pleasures, the greatest gift bequeathed to film fans by The Taking of Pelham 123 is its snapshot-style portrait of both filmmaking and New York City as they existed in the mid-1970’s. Not as grim as Mean Streets or Taxi Driver nor as fanciful as The Warriors, Pelham paints a portrait of everyday New Yorkers who find themselves in a dangerous and bizarre situation, but who still manage to treat it as little more than an inconvenience. The hostages all have places to be. The mayor is worried about how his response will affect the upcoming election. The MTA officials just want to get the trains running again. Even the two men at the center of the action seem like they’d rather be elsewhere. Matthau’s Zachary Garber is one of the all-time great portraits of a middle-management cog who skillfully balances the demands of his superiors and his subordinates while receiving appreciation from neither. As lead hostage-taker Mr. Blue, Robert Shaw is a shark-eyed blank, calmly completing crossword puzzles as he threatens to shoot hostages and just wishing everyone would do what he says so everyone can go home. The film’s dry, straight-faced humor is its greatest asset and an element that was completely missing from the 2009 Tony Scott directed remake. Some of it – specifically a racist gag regarding a group of Japanese businessmen and a particularly tasteless running joke about the ineffectiveness of female cops – will seem painfully dated to modern audiences, but the film remains breezy and light without ever sacrificing its realism.

Kino-Lorber’s new Blu-ray edition of The Taking of Pelham 123 features commentary by actor and fan Pat Healy and film historian Jim Healy, as well as new interviews with actor Hector Elizondo, editor Jerry Greenberg and composer David Shire, who discusses the film’s jazzy, propulsive score.