That was an excellent one.

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123 is an ill-advised TV movie remake of the original classic with Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw. Why they keep remaking classics I have no idea, because there's no chance they'll improve on the original. The Denzel Washington version was better than this but still nowhere near close to the original film's quality.Based on the same screenplay, the story plays out exactly the same here, albeit with a much cheaper budget and scuzzy, dated-looking direction which tries to be hip and stylish in that late '90s way (that invariably looks embarrassing to the modern viewer). The cast is the best thing about this, with solid bad guy turns from the likes of the reliable Vincent D'Onofrio, Donnie Wahlberg, and Richard Schiff, while Edward James Olmos is equally tough as the transit cop. You can't help but wonder why they bothered, though.

Every single actor in the 1974 movie was better than any of the actors in this TV remake. I guess they needed a New York accent, so they threw in Lorraine Bracco. Nice save.One thing the TV movie really glossed over was the issue of getting the ransom money to the terrorists on time. You'd really have to watch the 1974 movie to see the difference. Getting things done in one hour was a real nail-biter in the original movie. It's like "meh" in the TV movie.And that really leads me to the most important point: almost nobody seems to be afraid in the TV movie, including the hostages. You have one woman having one, strangely short-term panic attack. She has to carry the emotional load for her torpid companions, it seems to me. She recovers, inexplicably, without meds. Most of the time she seems perfectly rational.I have no idea what Stuart Copland had in mind with that score of his, but its pretty meditative compared to David Shire's work. All- in- all, I was not happy with the TV movie.

I don't think this 1998 remake was too bad, provided you regard it as a straightforward hostage film.It uses some of the best lines from the original almost verbatim (eg, "A person likes to know how much he's worth", "Do they still have the death penalty in New York" "I've always done my own killing" etc) which is ok, but I can't believe that Mr Blue in the 1998 film would not know the death penalty status in what appears to be his native New York. In the original, the Mr Blue character was clearly British, and might be excused for not knowing the death penalty status in all 50 US states.But as one other observer observed, the 1998 lacks .... WALLY MATTHAU (and to some extend George Costanza's dad also).The 74 version could almost have been sold as a comedy, but not this one. It's a straightforward tradesman like version without the wit, irony, pathos and dulcet tones of Wally MatthauCertainly worth watching if you love the 74 version so you can do a 'compare and contrast'. If you have not watched either, and you only want to see one of them, see the 74 version.The final scene is worth the wait (in both versions)

To begin with, I have to say that i have not seen the original and i have not read the book.Although the subject was totally new to me, i still didn't like it. Take a classic hijacking story, take out the cops (who barely appear in the film), and you get the story for this movie.Well this remake has even more things that make it bad. Examples? The bad guys are very very poorly built. We don't get to find out anything about them, about their past, about their plans for the future, about the relationship between them. There is no chemistry between them, they barely talk to each other, they give you the feeling that they just met or that they hate each other. Vincent d'Onofrio gives a fair performance as Mr Blue, but also i have to say i totally disliked the ending-- probably you will do the same.There are many other bad things going with the movie, but i'll end here. My vote? 3 out of 10.