1..2…3..GET THAT TRAIN A MOVING:
Pelham 123 has been hijacked by a group of guys that want New York City to give them one million dollars. If they don’t get the money within the time limit they will start shooting one hostage a minute. Transit Chief Lt. Garber (played by Walter Matthau) has to figure out a way to get the city to come up with the ridiculous demands that the gang has made while also keeping the gang from killing the hostages.

THERE HAS TO BE A RED LIGHT:
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is all about a robbery, not a train robbery, just a normal robbery with the use of a train as hostages. It’s plot is ok, a bunch of guys wanting money by taking a bunch of people on a train hostage if they don’t get the money and because they are in a subway everyone things they are stuck so the city gives them the money. Well of course they have a way to get out of the subway but the cops don’t know that.

Not much to this movie, a robbery with some hint of a mystery to how they are going to get away with the robbery, and then having the cops going after them. Though I did wonder how they guys where going to get out of the tunnel after they got the money but once that was told the movie lost most of the interest it held for me. It’s plot is slow moving, what little action that happens in it is short and quick, and the drama is so little that it can hardly be described as drama. I think I was supposed to feel that the robbers where these smart, tough guys that would kill the hostages and get away with the money but I didn’t.

Amazingly enough though I did somewhat like this movie even though it has a slow moving plot, nothing really ever happens in it, and the robbers are about as intense as a purple dinosaur. One of the things I was liking about this movie was how it’s dated in how everything was being handled. The transit authority kept track of the cops working by pins on a map board, the trains where being kept track of by lights on a board, and they kept in touch with each other with two way radios. There’s some good dialog given to this movie in how it’s simple, witty, and to the point rather than trying to be this movie that tries to be too smart for itself. It’s the natural back and forth that the dialog and characters have with each other that kept this movie being interesting. It’s also what drives the movie considering there’s no action in it. But it’s good enough that the movie didn’t lag, plus it did have me wanting to know what was going to happen. But the ending was so easy to figure out that it made seeing the end disappointing.

OLDER MOVIES DON’T NEED BLU RAY:
Movies that are made in 1974 should not really be put on Blu Ray. There’s no real reason that this movie should have been given this upgrade to Blu Ray. During the whole movie there’s grain, noise, and specks that make it look it’s age. There might have been some work done to try to make it look better but if so I didn’t see any of it. The color is dull and the audio is low, and there’s no bonus features at all.